ROUSSEAU 



^Ixjc (^xmt l^tTucatovs <^ ^ ^ 



^1 

Edited by NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 



ROUSSEAU 



EDUCATION ACCOEDING TO NATURE 



BY 

y 

THOMAS DAVIDSON 






NEW YORK 3 1898 jj 

CHAELES SCRIBNER'S SONS ^i<^^ 

1898 



TWi' 



1st COPY, r^ 

1898„ ^ 



v^ 






COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Koriooon IPrtes 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Masg. U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

In my volume on Aristotle in this series, I tried 
to give an account of ancient, classical, and social 
Education ; in the present volume I have endeavored 
to set forth the nature of modern, romantic, and 
unsocial Education. This education originates with 
Rousseau, 

With much reluctance I have been obliged to dwell, 
at considerable length, on the facts of his life, in order 
to show that his glittering structure rests, not upon 
any broad and firm foundation of well-generalized and 
well-sifted experience, but upon the private tastes and 
preferences of an exceptionally capricious and self- 
centred nature. His Emile is simply his selfish and 
unsocial self, forcibly withheld, by an external Provi- 
dence, in the shape of an impossible tutor, from those 
aberrations which led that self into the " dark forest " 
of misery. If my estimate of Rousseau's value as an 
educator proves disappointing to those who believe in 
his doctrines, I can only say, in excuse, that I am more 
disappointed than they are. 

In preparing the present volume, I have depended 
solely upon the original sources, the works of Rousseau 



/ 

PREFACE 



,'-t' 



himself, and these I have allowed tc tj\ ■ for them- 
selves. I owe a certain amount of dAxtion, and a 
few dates and references, to Mr. Morley's Rousseau. 



THOMAS DAVIDSON. 



" Glenmore," 

Keene, Essex Co., N.Y., 

January 31, 1898. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAOB 

Introddctorv 1 

I. Ideas and Aspirations current in Rousseau's 

Time. — Authority, Nature, and Culture . 3 

ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 

II. Formative Period 24 

III. Productive Period 50 

IV. Rousseau's Social Theories . . . .77 

MOUSSE AU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 

V. Infancy 97 

Vl. Childhood 113 

VII. Boyhood .137 

VIII. Adolescence 156 

IX. Youth 178 

X. Manhood 203 

XL Conclusion. — Rousseau's Influence . . 211 

Brief Bibliography 245 

Index 247 

vii 



KOUSSEAU 



INTRODUCTORY 

The Educational System of Rousseau forms an 
integral part of a complete theory, or philosophy, of 
human life, individual, domestic, social, economic, 
political, and religious. This theory, again, is com- 
pounded of elements mainly derived from two sources, 
(1) a somewhat incoherent body of ideas and aspira- 
tions current in Rousseau's time and in the centuries 
immediately preceding him, and (2) his own charac- 
ter, as formed by native endowment, education, and 
experience. The latter source makes a very large 
contribution; for among all writers of influence there 
is hardly one whose personality, that is, whose feel- 
ings, emotions, and tastes, enter for so much into his 
writings, as Rousseau's. He is, above all, subjective, 
and, indeed, the apostle of subjectivism. This is 
what he stands for in history. 

In order, then, to understand the pedagogics of 
Rousseau, we must begin by making as clear as pos- 
sible to ourselves that body of ideas and aspirations 
which gave form and direction to his thought, and 
then consider his experience and character, as furnish- 
ing the matter of the same. Having done this, we 
shall be in a position to account for his theory of 

B 1 



2 ROUSSEAU 

human life, and to see how his system of education is 
conditioned by it. We shall then find little difficulty 
in expounding that system itself, or in distinguishing 
what is objective and, therefore, permanent in it, from 
that which, being due to transitory notions or per- 
sonal tastes, is subjective and temporary. Finally, 
and with this distinction in our minds, we shall be 
able to trace the effect of Eousseau's thought, as a 
whole, upon subsequent theory and practice, and to 
show how his educational teachings have influenced 
later systems, for good or for evil, down to the present 
day. 



CHAPTER I 

IDEAS AND ASPIRATIONS CURRENT IN ROUSSEAU'S 
TIME 

Authority, Nature, and Culture 

Questo modo di retro par die uccida 
Pur lo viuco d' amor die fa natura. 
***** 
Per 1' altro modo quell' amor s' obblia 
Che fa natura e quel cli' 6 poi aggiunto, 
Di die la fede spezial si cria. 

Dante, Inferno, XI., 55, 56, 61-63. 

If true human greatness consists in deep insight, 
strong and well-distributed affection, and free, benefi- 
cent will, Rousseau was not in any sense a great 
man. His insight, like his knowledge, was limited 
and superficial; his affections were capricious and 
undisciplined; and his will was ungenerous and self- 
ish. His importance in literature and history is due 
to the fact that he summed up in his character, ex- 
pressed in his writings, and exemplified in his experi- 
ence, a group of tendencies and aspirations which had 
for some time been half blindly stirring in the bosom 
of society, and which in him attained to complete 
consciousness and manifestation for the first time.^ 

1 Rousseau has been undeservedly blamed for feeling and express- 
ing this. In the opening of his Confessions he says: " I feel my 
heart, and I know men. I am not made like any that I have seen, 

3 



4 ROUSSEAU 

These tendencies and aspirations, which may be com- 
prehended under the one term individualism, or, more 
strictly, subjective individualism, have a history, and 
this we must now sketch, if we are to understand the 
significance of our author. 

Modern individualism is a reaction against the ex- 
treme socialism of the Middle Age. The ruling prin- 
ciple of that age was authority, conceived as derived 
from a Supreme Being of infinite power, and vested 
in the heads of two institutions, Church and Empire, 
or, more frequently, in that of the Church alone. ^ 
According to the views then prevalent, the individual 
was neither his own origin nor his own end. He was 
created by God, for God's glory, ^ and was merely a 
means to that. He had therefore, of course, no free- 
dom, whether of thought, affection, or will. Tree in- 
quiry into the laws and nature of reality gave way to 
a timid discussion of the meaning of authority. The 
natural affections were but grudgingly admitted to a 
place in life, and, even as late as the Council of Trent, 
in the sixteenth century, an anathema was pronounced 
upon any one who should say that the state of vir- 



and I venture to think that I am not made like any that exist. If I 
am not better, I am, at least, different. Whether nature did well 
or ill in breaking the mould in which she cast me, no one can tell 
till after he has read me." The truth is, Rousseau was the first of 
a new type, of which there are plenty of specimens in our day, the 
type of the subjective, sensuous, sentimental, dalliant, querulous 
individualist. Nature by no means broke the mould. See Morley, 
Bousseau, Vol. II., pp. 30i sqq. 

1 See Dante, De Monarchia, and compare Bryce, The Holy 
Roman Umpire, passim. 

2 " In His will is our peace," says a blessed spirit in the Paradise 
of Dante (III., 85). 



IDEAS AND ASPIRATIONS 6 

ginity and celibacy was not better than the state of 
matrimony.^ Above all, free self-determination of 
the will, possible only through free inquiry and free 
affection, was placed under the ban. The task of the 
centuries since the close of the Middle Age has been 
gradually to shake off this yoke and to restore men to 
freedom, that is, to convince them that they are ends 
in and through themselves. 

The first notable manifestations ^ of this tendency 
were the Germanic Reformation and the Italian Re- 
naissance, both belonging to the sixteenth century. 
The former claimed freedom for the individual intelli- 
gence; the latter, freedom for the individual feelings 
and emotions. Neither of them thought of aspiring 
to freedom of the moral will, which is the only true 
freedom. This is a fact of the utmost importance in 
enabling us to comprehend the thought and practice 
of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centu- 
ries. We look vainly in these for the conception of 
moral freedom.^ What the absence of this meant, we 
can perhaps most clearly see, when we realize that 
the complete, logical outcome of the Reformation was 
Voltaire ; that of the Renaissance, Rousseau. It takes 
the clear, mathematical mind of the French to carry 
principles to their logical conclusions in thought and 

1 See Denzinger, Enchiridion Symholorum et Definitionum, p. 
231, § 856. 

2 We can trace the tendency itself back to Abelard (1079-1142) , 
and even further. 

8 In Goethe's great drama, Faust, who stands for the complete 
movement toward individualism, and who discovers its nature and 
limitations, takes his stand upon the will. " Allein ich will!" he 
says, in defiance of all Mephistopheles' suggestions. Part I., 1. 1432 
(Schroer). 



6 KOUSSEAU 

practice.^ What Eousseau demands is absolutely free 
play for the feelings and emotions. But it took a long 
time for any one to become clearly aware that this 
was the true meaning of the Renaissance. 

In trying to escape from authority, the men of the 
Reformation appealed to Reason ; those of the Renais- 
sance, to Nature. And the causes of this are obvious. 
Reason can find justification only in Reason ; feeling, 
emotion, as claiming to be guiding principles, must 
look for theirs in Nature. Accordingly, while among 
the " Reformers " Reason played the chief part, and 
in the end gave rise to speculative philosophy, among 
the "Humanists" Nature received a homage which 
finally developed into physical science. The notion 
of "Nature" was an inheritance from the Greeks, 
chiefly, it should seem, through Plato. Indeed, the 
distinction between Nature (^ucrts) and convention 
(^eVts), or law (vo/x,os), is fundamental in Greek think- 
ing, which may be said to have originated in an at- 
tempt to find in Nature, regarded as unerring because 
necessitated, a sure refuge from the manifold forms 
of capricious-seeming conventions.^ Already in the 
minds of the Greeks this distinction involves that 
dualism between the material and the spiritual which 
pervades almost their entire philosophy, and con- 
stitutes its chief defect. Accepting, without analy- 
sis, the ordinary, common-sense view of the world, 
which regards material things as entirely indepen- 

1 See Mrs. Browning, Aurora Leigh, Bk. VI. 

2 See, especially, Plato's Cratylus and the opening lines of ^s- 
chylus' Againemnon. Cf. Lerscli, Sprachphilosophie der Alten, 
Vol. I., pp. 1 sqq. 



IDEAS AND ASPIRATIONS 7 

dent of thought, and governed by laws more rigid 
and reliable than it can claim, they were fain, like 
many equally unschooled scientists of the present day, 
to adopt these laws as the norm for human action; 
in a word, to naturalize spirit. Continuing to think, 
however, they were finally surprised to discover that 
Nature itself was purely conventional {Oiau, vofjixS), 
that is, subject to the laws of spirit, and therefore 
incapable of furnishing a court of appeal from these. 
This was the work of the Sophists, who, by their open 
scepticism, made it very clear that, if there was any 
inexorable law, it must be sought elsewhere than in 
Nature. Socrates wisely sought it in the unity and 
completeness of thought ; but his work was undone by 
his pupil Plato, who sought it in a world of ideas of 
his own invention, a world having no necessary con- 
nection with either matter or mind. From this time 
on, Nature, and gradually mind or Eeason also, fell 
into disrepute, and the supreme object of interest 
became Plato's fantastic creation, the so-called ideal 
world. This tendency, along with many other things 
in Greek philosophy,^ passed over into Christianity, 
and reached its culmination in the Middle Age, when 
Nature and Reason were both equally regarded with 
suspicion, or even contempt,^ as the origin of evil, 
and the place of Plato's ideal world was taken by an 
authoritative Eevelation. 

As we have seen, the Reformation undertook to 
rehabilitate Reason, and the Renaissance, Nature. 

1 See Hatch, Hibbert Lectures (1888), generally. 

2 See the horrified speech of the Archbishop, in Faust, Pt. II., 
Act i., lines 285-304 (Schroer). 



8 ROUSSEAU 

They did so without attempting to overcome their 
opposition, or, generally speaking, to reject Revela- 
tion, at least openly. Thus it came to pass that the 
thinkers of the seventeenth century found, in their 
inheritance from the past, three unreconciled concep- 
tions, or groups of conceptions, whose opposing claims 
they were in no position to settle^ — Nature, Reason, 
Revelation. As might have been expected, some 
declared for one, some for another. Generally speak- 
ing, churchmen and their friends clung to Revelation 
and authority; while other thinkers tried to make 
peace between Reason and Nature. In general, the 
English mind showed a preference for Nature, and 
tried to explain Reason through it, while the French 
mind, setting out with Reason, could find no way of 
arriving at Nature, and so left the dualism unsolved. 
Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke form a strong contrast to 
Pascal, Descartes, and Malebranche. Rousseau gen- 
erally follows the former, and especially Hobbes. 

Hobbes conceived the human race as setting out on 
its career in a "state of Nature," which to him meant 
a state of universal war, resulting in a life " solitary, 
poor, brutish, nasty, and short. '"^ At the same time 
he regarded Nature as "the art whereby God hath 
made and governs the world," getting over the para- 
dox herein involved by maintaining that Nature " is 
by the art of man . . . imitated that it can make 
an artificial animal,"* in other words, that 'art' is 

1 Most of the thought of the Western world, for the last three 
hundred years, has been devoted to effecting this settlement, thus 
far with very indifferent success. 

2 Leviathan, Cap. XIII. 8 Ibid,, Introduction. 



IDEAS AND ASPIRATIONS 9 

an extension of Nature.^ "Nature," according to 
Hobbes, " has made men so equal in faculties of the 
body and mind, as that though there be found one 
man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of 
quicker mind, than another, yet when all is reckoned 
together, the difference between man and man is not 
so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim 
to himself any benefit to which another may not pre- 
tend as well as he." And not only are men equal, 
but they have equal rights. "The right of Nature," 
he says, " which writers commonly call jus naturale, 
is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as 
well as himself, for the preservation of his own 
nature; that is to say, of his own life; and conse- 
quently of doing anything, which in his own judg- 
ment and reason he shall conceive to be the aptest 
means thereto. By 'liberty ' is understood, according 
to the proper signification of the word, the absence of 
external impediments." ... "A 'law of Nature,' 
lex naturalis, is a precept or general rule, found out 
by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that 
which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the 
means of preserving the same; and to omit that by 
which he thinketh it may best be preserved." In 
this " condition of war of every one against every one, 
. . . every one is governed by his own reason " and 

1 Shakespeare, Wi7iter's Tale, Act IV., sc. iii. : 

" Yet nature is made better by no mean, 
But nature makes that mean : so over that art, 
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art 
That nature makes. . . . 

. . . This is an art 
Which does mend nature — change it rather : but 
The art itself is nature." 



10 ROUSSEAU 

"every man has a right to everything, even to an- 
other's body. And, therefore, as long as the natural 
right of every man to everything endureth, there can 
be no security to any man." . . . "And conse- 
quently it is a precept, or general rule of reason, 
that every man ought to endeavor peace as far as he 
has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain 
it that he may seek, and use, all helps and advantages 
of war. The first branch of which rule containeth 
the first, the fundamental law of Nature, which is, to 
seek peace and follow it. The second, the sum of the 
right of Nature; which is, by all means we can, to 
defend ourselves. From this fundamental law of 
Nature, by which men are commanded to endeavor 
peace, is derived this second law : that a man be will- 
ing, when others are so too, as far-forth as, for peace, 
and defence of himself, he shall think it necessary, 
to lay down this right to all things ; and be contented 
with so much liberty against other men as he would 
allow other men against himself." . . . "The mu- 
tual transferring of right, is that which men call 
'contract.' "^ 

" From the law of Nature, by which we are obliged 
to transfer to another such rights as, being retained, 
hinder the peace of mankind, there followeth a third, 
which is this, that men perform their covenants 
made." . . . "In this law of Nature consisteth the 
fountain and original of 'justice.'" . . . "When a 
covenant is made, then to break it is 'unjust'; and 
the definition of 'injustice ' is no other than the non- 
performance of covenant. And whatsoever is not 
1 Leviathan, Cap. XIV. 



IDEAS AND ASPIRATIONS 11 

unjust is 'just.'"^ . . . "The agreement ... of 
men is by covenant only, which is artificial; and 
therefore it is no wonder if there be somewhat else 
required, besides covenant, to make their agreement 
constant and lasting; which is a common power, to 
keep them in awe, and to direct their actions to a 
common benefit." ^ . . . "The only way to erect such 
a common power ... is to confer all their power and 
strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, 
that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, 
unto one will; which is as much as to say, to appoint 
one man, or assembly of men, to bear their person;® 
and every one to own, and to acknowledge, himself 
to be author of whatsoever he that so beareth their 
person shall act, or cause to be acted, in those things 
which concern the common peace and safety; and 
therein to submit their wills, every one to his will, 
and their judgments to his judgment. This is more 
than consent or concord; it is a real unity of them 
all, in one and the same person made by covenant of 
every man with every man."* . . . " He that carrieth 
this person is called 'sovereign,' and, said to have 
'sovereign power'; and every one besides his 'sub- 
ject.'" . . . " The attaining of this sovereign power 
is by two ways. One is by natural force." . . . 
" The other is, when men agree amongst themselves 
to submit to some man, or assembly of men, volun- 
tarily, on confidence to be protected by him against 

1 Leviathan, Cap. XV. 

2 Cf. Dante, De Monarchia, Bk. III., Cap. XVI. 

3 Used here in the sense of the Latin persona, for which see In- 
stitutes of Justinian. 

* Cf. the story of Menenius Agrippa, Livy, Bk. II., Cap. 32. 



12 ROUSSEAU 

all others. The latter may be called a political com- 
monwealth, or commonwealth by ' institution ' ; and 
the former a commonwealth by 'acquisition.' "^ . . . 
"A 'commonwealth' is said to be 'instituted,' when 
a multitude of men do agree, and covenant, every one 
with every one, that to whatsoever man, or assembly 
of men, shall be given by the major part, the 'right ' 
to 'present ' the person of all of them, that is to say, 
to be their 'representative,' every one, as well he that 
voted for it, as he that voted against it, shall 'author- 
ize ' all the actions and judgments of that man, or 
assembly of men, in the same manner as if they were 
his own, to the end, to live peaceably among them- 
selves, and be protected against other men. From 
this institution of a commonwealth are derived all the 
'rights ' and 'faculties ' of him, or them, to whom 
sovereign power is conferred by the consent of the 
people assembled." ^ 

Hobbes now goes on to say that the compact, thus 
once made, can never be either replaced or annulled ; 
that it is binding on all; that the sovereign, once 
elected, can do no injustice, and hence cannot be put 
to death, or otherwise punished, by his subjects ; that 
he has the right to prescribe or proscribe opinion, to 
determine the laws of property, to decide all contro- 
versies, to make war and peace, to choose all officials, 
to reward "with riches or honor," and to punish, 
" with corporal or pecuniary punishment, or with ig- 
nominy, every subject," and to confer titles of honor. ^ 
Though, theoretically speaking, the sovereign may be 

1 Leviathan, Cap. XVII. 8 Leviathan, Cap. XVII. 

2 Leviathan, Cap. XVIII. 



IDEAS AND ASPIRATIONS 13 

either a monarch, an aristocracy, or a democracy, yet 
Hobbes, for various reasons assigned, advocates the 
first. But, in any case, as soon as the sovereign is 
in power, "the liberty of a subject lieth . . . only 
in those things which, in regulating their actions, the 
sovereign hath pretermitted." This is the less to be 
regretted, that "liberty or freedom signifieth, prop- 
erly, the absence of opposition; by opposition I mean 
external impediments, and may be applied no less to 
irrational and inanimate creatures than to rational." ^ 
Indeed, " liberty and necessity are consistent, as the 
water that hath not only liberty but a necessity of 
descending by the channel ; so likewise in the actions 
that men voluntarily do ; which, because they proceed 
from their will, proceed from liberty; and yet, because 
every act of man's will, and every desire and incli- 
nation, proceedeth from some cause, and that from 
another cause, in a contimial chain, whose first link 
is in the hand of God, the first of causes proceed from 
necessity." . . . "And did not His will assixre the 
necessity of man's will . . . the liberty of men would 
be a contradiction and impediment to the omnipotence 
and liberty of God." ^ 

Hobbes' views with regard to law are characteristic. 
"The law of Kature," he says, "and the civil law 
contain each other. For the laws of Nature, which 
consist in equity, justice, gratitude, and other moral 
virtues on these depending in the condition of mere 
nature . . . are not properly laws, but qualities that 
dispose men to peace and obedience. When a com- 

1 This confusion of ideas was inherited by Rousseau. 

2 Leviathan, Cap. XXI. 



14 KOUSSEAU 

monwealtli is once settled, they are actually laws, and 
not before." . . . "The law of Nature therefore is 
a part of the civil law." . . . "Reciprocally, also, 
the civil law is a part of the dictates of Nature. For 
justice, that is to say, performance of covenant, and 
giving to every one his own, is a dictate of the law of 
Nature." . . . "Civil and natural law are not differ- 
ent kinds, but different parts of law, whereof one part, 
being written, is called civil, the othei', unwritten, 
natural." ^ 

We have made these long quotations from Hobbes, 
because he may be regarded as the father of that 
system of ideas which found their complete expres- 
sion in Rousseau. Looking back on them, let us con- 
sider (1) what he borrowed from previous thought, 
(2) what he altered or added, and (3) what he arrived 
at. (1) He borrowed from Greek thought the notions 
of Nature (4>v<n<:) and convention (^eVis), or law (vo/xos), 
of necessity and freedom, and of hypostatic unity; 
from Latin thought, the notions of person and natural 
law;^ from mediaeval theology the notions of God's 
omnipotence and man's consequent dependence and 
unfreedom; and from "the judicious Hooker," ap- 
parently, the notion of a "social contract."^ (2) He 
identified convention with nature, by making the 
former a mere conscious, that is, rational, expression 
of the latter ; * and freedom with necessity, by calling 



1 Leviathan, Cap. XXVI. Note the naturalization of spirit ! 

2 See Justinian, Institutes. 

3 See Ecclesiastical Polity, Bk. I. 

^ Here we have the germ of Hegel's objective and subjective 
reason, and, indeed, of modern idealism generally. 



IDEAS AND ASPIRATIONS 15 

that whicli proceeds from a necessitated will, volun- 
tary and, therefore, free. He assumed that men lived 
originally in a state of Nature, which was at once a 
state of freedom and a state of universal warfare, and 
that they passed out of that into a civic condition by 
a social contract, resulting in the creation of a new 
hypostatic person, of which all individuals thence- 
forth became mere organs. This new person, he 
maintained, had no real liberty of its own, but, being 
a product of Nature, was a mere implement in the 
hands of God, for His own ends. Thus (3), in his 
attempt to correlate Revelation, Nature, and Reason, 
or Convention, Hobbes arrived at the notion of a state 
or commonwealth as a mere automaton, whose motive 
force was externally communicated through its head 
— a notion which underlies many forms of theistic 
religion, for example, Islam and Calvinism, and finds 
its most complete realization in the Turkish and 
Russian empires of to-day. It is due to a mere shuf- 
fling and combining of old, unanalyzed concepts, such 
as those above enumerated, in a mind essentially 
servile. 

But, though Hobbes was the avowed champion of 
moral determinism and political despotism, he unwit- 
tingly paved the way for freedom, by admitting that 
all sovereign or despotic rights were derived from a 
primitive convention. His readers forgot that this 
convention was, at bottom, due to Nature and God, 
and fixed their attention upon men as the source of 
civic rights. So true was this that even Charles II., 
Hobbes' pupil, was highly offended at what seemed a 
denial of the "divine right of kings." To maintain 



16 ROUSSEAU 

this right, Sir Robert Filmer wrote his Patriarcha,^ 
which tried to show that all sovereign rights were 
derived from the sovereignty of the world originally 
conceded by God to Adam, and had descended in a 
direct line from him ; hence, that all primitive equality 
among men and all occasion for a social contract were 
impossible. Princes are born princes; the rest of 
mankind, subjects or thralls. Against this plea for 
royal absolutism and popular enslavement, Locke 
raised his voice, and published in 1689, just after the 
revolution which expelled James II., his Two Trea- 
tises on Government. In the former of these he 
refuted, with needless gravity, the flimsy arguments 
of Filmer, and, in the latter, undertook to show what 
were the true origins of civil government. 

Defining political power as "a right of making 
laws, with penalties of death, and consequently all 
less penalties for the regulating and preserving of 
property, and of employing the force of the community 
in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of 
the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this 
only for the public good," ^ he proceeded to consider 
how such power could rise. In dealing with this 
question, he made the two fundamental assumptions 
of Hooker and Hobbes, (1) that mankind started on 
its career in a state of Nature, in which all individuals 
enjoyed complete liberty and equality, (2) that the 
transition from this to the civic state was through a 
social contract; but he sided with Hooker, against 

1 Leviathan was published in 1G51 ; Patriarcha was written be- 
fore 1653, but not published till 1680. 

2 Bk. II., Cap. I., ad Jin. 



IDEAS AND ASPIRATIONS 17 

Hobbes, in maintaining that the state of Nature was 
not a state of war, but one of peace, governed by a 
natural law. "The state of Nature," he says, "has 
a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, 
and reason, which is that laiv, teaches all mankind who 
will but consult it, that being all equal and inde- 
pendent no one ought to harm another in his life, 
health, liberty, or possessions; for men being all the 
workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise 
Maker, all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent 
into the world by His order and about His business, 
they are His property whose workmanship they are, 
made to last during His, not one another's pleasure." 
Here we have to observe two things : (1) that, as in 
Hobbes, Reason is identified with the law of Nature, 
(2) that man is still conceived as being a mere instru- 
ment in the hands of a Higher Power. At the same 
time, Locke does not, on that account, deprive him of 
either moral ^ or political liberty, or submit him 
irrevocably to the tender mercies of a despot. He 
says: "To this strange doctrine, viz., That in the 
state of Nature, every one has the executive power of 
the law of Nature, I doubt not but it will be objected 
that it is unreasonable for men to be judges in their 
own cases . . . and that therefore God hath certainly 
appointed government to restrain the partiality and 
violence of men. I easily grant that civil government 
is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the 
state of Nature, which must certainly be great when 
men may be judges in their own cases." . . . "But I 
desire those who make this objection to remember 

1 See Two Treatises, Bk. II., Cap. VI., § 58. 
c 



18 ROUSSEAU 

that absolute monarchs are but men ; and, if govern- 
ment is to be the remedy of those evils which neces- 
sarily follow from men being judges in their own 
cases, and the state of Nature is therefore not to be 
endured, I desire to know what kind of government 
that is, and how much better it is than the state of 
Nature, where one man commanding a multitude has 
the liberty to be judge in his own case, and may do to 
all his subjects whatever he pleases without the least 
question or control of those who execute his pleasure? 
and in whatsoever he doth, whether led by reason, 
mistake, or passion, must be submitted to? which 
men in the state of Nature are not bound to do to one 
another. " ^ 

Locke not only rejects Hobbes' theory of despotic 
sovereignty, but he stoutly maintains that men, by 
submitting to common laws, do not lose, but gain, free- 
dom. He says : " However it may be mistaken, the 
end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to pre- 
serve and enlarge freedom." . . . "Where there is 
no law there is no freedom." . . . "For who could 
be free, when every other man's humor might domi- 
neer over him." ^ He holds that all property is right- 
fully due to labor, and all inequality of possession 
(wrongfully) to the introduction of money. ^ The 
origin of civil society is thus described : " Whenever 
any number of men so unite into one society as to 
quit every one his executive power of the law of 
Nature, and to resign it to the public, there and there 
only is a political or civil society. And this is done 

1 Two Treatises, Bk. II., Cap. II., § 13. Cf. Cap. VII., § 90. 

2 Two Treatises, Bk. II., Cap. VI., § 57. 3 Ibid., Cap. V. 



IDEAS AND ASPIRATIONS 19 

wherever any number of men, in the state of Nature, 
enter into society to make one people, one body poli- 
tic, under one supreme government; or else when he 
joins himself to, and incorporates with, any govern- 
ment already made." ^ And Locke agrees with Aris- 
totle in holding that men unite in this way because 
"man is by nature a political animal." "God," he 
says, " having made man such a creature that, in His 
own judgment, it was not good for him to be alone, 
put him under strong obligations of necessity, con- 
venience, and inclination, to drive him into society, 
as well as fitted him with understanding and language 
to continue and enjoy it." ^ And Locke firmly be- 
lieved, not only that all civil societies were due to 
original contracts, voluntarily entered into, but also 
that they might be dissolved when that contract was 
broken. Distinguishing, moreover, between society 
and government, which latter he held to be the act of 
a society already formed, he maintained that, when a 
government, or form of government, failed to perform 
the functions for which it was instituted, society 
might overthrow it, and put another in its place — an 
excuse for the revolution of 1688, and for revolutions 
generally. 

Comparing Locke with Hobbes, we find a consider- 
able advance, on the part of the former, in the direc- 
tion of liberty. Men are no longer moral automata; 
they are no longer drawn into a social contract by 
mere selfishness, but by a beneficent law of their 
nature ; the social contract no longer extends to the 
whole of human life, and is no longer irrevocable; by 

1 Two Treatises, Bk. II., Cap. VII., § 89. ^Ibid., § 77. 



20 ROUSSEAU 

such contract men gain, and do not lose, freedom, 
otherwise the contract is not binding; divine au- 
thority, though still freely acknowledged, does not 
prevent men from being the originators, and the only 
lawful originators, of their own governments ; Reason 
is the qualification for free citizenship. Neverthe- 
less, Hobbes' fundamental fallacies — the state of 
Nature and the social contract — still remain. The 
two Englishmen, Hobbes and Locke, were the chief 
inspirers of Rousseau's social and political theories. 
Of earlier men whose views tended away from medise- 
valism, such as Marsiglio of Padua (fourteenth cen- 
tury), Hooker (1553-1600), Machiavelli (1469-1527), 
Bodin (1530-1596), Grotius (1583-1645), Althusen, 
he knew very little, though he mentions some of 
them. Among his more immediate predecessors, the 
men that most influenced him were Montesquieu 
(1689-1755) and Morelly. The former, in his Esprit 
des Lois, first published at Geneva, in 1748, had dealt 
with social and political questions in an historic and 
scientific way, inquiring into facts, instead of spin- 
ning theories out of his own head or heart. Against 
this method, Rousseau, who hated research, and could 
not endure continuous study, but followed his *' heart " 
in everything, protested with all his might, so that 
many of his theories may be said to come from a reac- 
tion against those of Montesquieu. Morelly, on the 
other hand, whose Code de la Nature, ou le viritable 
Esprit des Loix, de tout terns n^glig^ ou m4connu, 
appeared in 1754, soon after Rousseau's second dis- 
course (see Cap. IV.), and several years before the 
Social Contract, must have found in Rousseau a strong 



IDEAS AND ASPIRATIONS 21 

sympatliizer. Though he combated Rousseau's notion 
that human corruption is due to the arts and sciences, 
and agreed with Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu in 
holding that man is improved by social culture, he 
was at one with Rousseau in maintaining that men in 
a state of Nature are good, and not bad, that most gov- 
ernments hitherto have rather corrupted them than 
otherwise, and that they have done this by permitting 
private property, and consequent inequality of posses- 
sion, which is the source of all other inequalities and 
most other evils. He, accordingly, recommended a 
return to the simplicity and equality of Nature, by the 
establishment of a community of goods, that is, of 
socialism. 

At the time when Rousseau began to write, the 
ideas of Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Morelly, 
and the questions started by them, were in the air. 
The chief of these notions were : (1) a state of Nature, 
as man's original condition, — a state conceived some- 
times as one of goodness, peace, freedom, equality, 
and happiness, sometimes as one of badness, war, 
slavery, inequality, and misery; (2) a law of Nature, 
independent of all human enactment, and yet binding 
upon all men; (3) a social contract, voluntarily and 
consciously made, as the basis of justification for civil 
society and authority, — a contract by which men 
united for the protection of rights, and the enforce- 
ment of laAvs which had existed already in the state 
of Nature ; (4) false inequality among men, as due to 
private property, or the usurpation by some of what, 
by natural right, belonged to all; (5) a peaceful, 
untroubled, unenterprising, unstruggling existence as 






22 ROUSSEAU 

the normal form of human life. The questions started 
were chiefly these : (1) Was the state of Nature one of 
freedom and peace, or of war and slavery? (2) Are 
Nature's laws beneficent or the opposite ? (3) Do 
men gain or lose freedom through the social contract? 
(4) Are they improved or degraded by social union 
and culture? (5) Since all men are free and equal in 
the state of Nature, how do social subordination of one 
man to another, and social inequality come about, and 
what is their justification? (6) Are men bound to 
submit to social regulations against their wills? 

In all these notions and questions there are two 
facts specially deserving of attention: (1) the ever- 
increasing importance assigned to Nature, and the 
ever-growing tendency to identify the divine will with 
its laws, and to regard Reason as the expression of 
these ; (2) the growing tendency to look upon man as 
the originator of laws and the founder of institutions; 
as, therefore, their master and not their slave. It 
thus appears that, in the attempt to reconcile the three 
concepts of Eevelation, Nature, and Reason, regarded 
as guides to human action, the first place came gradu- 
ally to be assigned to the second, and all appeals to 
be made to it. And this fact was fraught with the 
gravest consequences, two of which may be here 
mentioned. (1) There was the gradual decline of 
theology and metaphysical speculation, with the 
growth of natural science. (2) There was the ten- 
dency to regard human duty as a mere docile follow- 
ing of Nature, and no longer as a process of abnegation 
of the natural self in favor of a loftier ideal. 

In Nature, which thus became the watchword of the 



IDEAS AND ASPIRATIONS 23 

time, men sought a quiet refuge from tlie warring 
subtleties of a theology and a philosophy which had 
lost contact with life, and left it devoid of interest. 
And though, for a time, they misunderstood Nature, 
and committed many enormities in their devotion to 
her, yet it proved in the end that " Xature never did 
betray the heart that loved her." Whatever view we 
may take of Revelation and Reason, it is certain that 
it is through the study of Nature, taken in its widest 
sense, that the truth of them becomes significant and 
fruitful for us. 

It was while these ideas were fermenting in men's 
minds that Rousseau came upon the scene. 



CHAPTER II 

ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 

(1) Formative Period (1712-1741) 

Who would command must in command find bliss. 

. . . Enjoyment vulgarizes. 

GcETHE, Faust, Pt. II., Act IV., lines 5640, 5647. 

Human beings may, roughly speaking, be divided 
into two classes, — the dalliers and the willers, — 
into those who live for passive enjoyment, and those 
who live for active mastery. The former, endowed 
with keen sensibility and strong appetite (Plato's 
imOvfirjTiKov), which tend to direct attention upon them- 
selves and upon immediate objects, and usually desti- 
tute of ambition, seek to enjoy each moment, as it 
passes, pursuing no definite path, but wandering up 
and down the field of time, like children, plucking 
the flowers of delight that successively attract them. 
As they are going nowhere in particular, they, of 
course, arrive nowhere. The latter, distinguished 
by courage and the spirit of enterprise (^u/ao's), which 
give their interests an outward direction, and by the 
stern quality of ambition, live mainly in the future, 
half ignoring the blandishments of the present, and 
finding their satisfaction in planning and carrying 
out great enterprises, which, when successful, give 

24 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 25 

them position and fame — often a permanent place in 
the world's history.^ Of the two chief literary in- 
spirers of the French Revolution and of the individu- 
alistic tendencies of the present century, the one, 
Rousseau, belonged to the former class, the other, 
Voltaire, to the latter. How, then, it may be asked, 
did Rousseau come to be an important factor in a 
great historic movement? The answer is. For two 
reasons, (1) because, like other men of his type, he 
was thrown into circumstances which wounded his 
sensibility, and thus driven to imagine others in 
which it would find free play, and (2) because the 
movement in question was toward the very things 
which he represented, — sensibility, subjectivism, and 
dalliance. Over most of the men of his class, how- 
ever, he had the rare advantage of being able to ex- 
press his imaginings in literary form and in a style 
which, for simplicity, clearness, effectiveness, and 
almost every other excellence, looks almost in vain 
for an equal. Keen sensibility, uttered with confi- 
dent and touching eloquence, is the receipt for making 
fanatics, and Rousseau made them. Meanwhile his 
ambitious rival, Voltaire, was making sceptics. • 

In treating of the life of Rousseau, it will be suffi- 
cient for the present purpose to consider only those 
events and experiences which, in a marked degree, 
contributed to form his character, and, through it, to 
make his writings what they are. ' Persons desirous 

1 Literary examples of the former class are Hamlet and Wilhelm 
Meister ; of the latter, Julius Cpesar and Faust. In Mark Antony 
the characteristics of the two contend with fatal result. Cf. Ten- 
nyson's poem Will. 



26 KOUSSEAU 

of knowing more will find ample details in his Con- 
fessions, perhaps the most recklessly impartial biog- 
raphy that ever was written, his Reveries, letters, etc. 

Jean- Jacques Kousseau, the second son^ of Isaac 
Rousseau and of his wife Suzanne, nee Bernard, was 
born at Geneva on the 28th of June, 1712. Both 
parents belonged to the citoyen class, the highest of 
the five classes into which the inhabitants of Geneva 
were divided ; both were Protestants. The father, a 
watchmaker by trade, was descended from an old 
Parisian family, — his great-great-grandfather having 
emigrated from Paris and settled in Geneva in the early 
days of the Reformation (1529) — and retained all the 
characteristics of his French origin, — sensibility, live- 
liness, gallantry, romanticism, and love of pleasure. 
The mother, daughter of a clergyman, was a person 
of great beauty and refinement, but endowed with an 
almost morbid sensibility, which she had heightened 
by extensive reading of sentimental, highly colored 
romances, such as were current at the time. She 
died in giving birth to Jean-Jacques, who was thus 
left to the care of a father such as we have described. 

■It Avill be necessary to linger for a moment on the first 
years of our hero's life, because in them his character 
was formed to a degree that is very unusual. He 
was, in fact, a very precocious child, quick, vivacious, 
responsive, a very thunder-cloud stored with light- 
ning feelings, ready to flash forth at any moment. 
At his birth he was taken charge of by an aunt, a 
sister of his mother's, a quiet, kindly person, much 

1 The elder son, seven years older than Jean-Jacques, ran away 
from home to Germany quite young, and was lost sight of. 



KOUSSEAU'S LIFE 27 

given to embroidery and song-singing. She treated 
him with exemplary gentleness, not to say indulgence, 
allowing him to follow the bent of his own disposi- 
tion, which, though free from any trace of malignity, 
continually drew him toward incontinence — to pilfer- 
ing and devouring eatables — and to romancing; in 
plain terms, to lying. His sympathetic and winning 
nature, by saving him from correction, also prevented 
him from becoming aware of any moral principle, so 
that he passed his whole childhood without ever 
impinging upon any disagreeable ought, without any 
other guides than his own feelings. And this condi- 
tion of things lasted during his entire life. He was 
always completely at the mercy of his feelings, ac- 
knowledging duty only for purposes of rhetoric. 

As he was never allowed to go out and mix with 
other children in the street, he learnt very early to 
read and write; so that, by the time he was six years 
old, he was feeding his emotions and his vivid imagi- 
nation upon the romances which had formed his 
mother's library. For over a year, his father and he 
used frequently to sit up Avhole nights together, 
reading aloud, in turn, the most sensational and 
sentimental stories, forgetting sleep in the nervous 
excitement and tearful rapture caused by pathetic 
love-scenes, heroic adventures, and hairbreadth 
escapes. Before he was seven years old (1719), his 
mother's library was exhausted, and then father and 
son were obliged to turn for nocturnal entertainment 
to the library of her father, which consisted of such 
works as Plutarch's Lives, Le Sueur's History of 
Church and Empire, Bossuet's Lectures on Universal 



28 ROUSSEAU 

History, Nani's History of Venice, Ovid's Metamor- 
plioses, and certain works of La Bruy^re, Fontenelle, 
and Moliere. Though not one of these seems to have 
been without its effect upon the chikl, that which 
most interested him was the first. Of this he says : 
" Through these interesting readings, and the conver- 
sations to which they gave occasion between my father 
and me, were formed that free, republican spirit, and 
that proud, indomitable character, impatient of yoke 
and of servitude, which have tormented me all my 
life, in the situations least suited for their manifes- 
tation. Continually occupied with Eome and with 
republican Athens, living, so to speak, with their 
great men, myself born a citizen of a republic, and 
son of a father whose strongest passion was his love 
of country, I was set aflame by his example ; I thought 
myself a Greek or a Koman; I became the personage 
whose life I was reading ; the stories of constancy and 
heroism which had struck me put lightning into my 
eyes and force into my voice. One day as I was tell- 
ing at table the story of Scaevola, the whole company 
was frightened to see me go up and hold my hand 
over a chafing-dish to represent his action." 

Melodramatic romances and Plutarchic heroisms 
represented the world to the precocious, nervous, 
imaginative, secluded child, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 
at the age of eight. The former rendered him 
dreamy and fantastic, the latter intractable and de- 
fiant. He himself says: "Thus began to grow and 
appear in me this heart at once so haughty and so 
tender, and this character, effeminate, yet indomi- 
table, which, always hovering between weakness and 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 29 

courage, between dalliance and virtue, have all my 
life long placed me in contradiction with myself and 
caused me to miss both abstinence and enjoyment, 
pleasure and self-control." A sad and unpromising 
enough result of the first stage of education ! 

In 1720, when Jean-Jacques was eight years old, 
his father, in consequence of a dispute with an " in- 
solent and cowardly" French captain, in which he 
felt himself unjustly treated, withdrew from Geneva, 
leaving his child to the care of a maternal uncle, who 
sent him, along with his own son, a child of the same 
age, to be educated in the house of a clergyman, 
named Lambercier, at Bossey, a village not far from 
the city. The cousins remained here for two years, 
and for the greater part of the time enjoyed them- 
selves royally. The country, with all its beauty, 
freshness, and freedom, was new to them, and they 
rioted in it. They formed an ardent friendship for 
each other, and were inseparable night and day. 
They did not learn much — " Latin and all the trifling 
rubbish that goes with it under the name of educa- 
tion " ; but they were, in the main, kindly and even 
indulgently treated, so that, while they were fond of 
their master, as well as of his sister, who acted the 
part of mother to them, they had but slight occasion 
to seek any other guide than their own tastes and 
appetites, or to learn the meaning of duty. It is easy 
to understand how, with an experience like this, 
backed by that of his earlier childhood, Rousseau 
came to believe in, and passionately to maintain, the 
natural goodness of the human character. To an 
incident which occurred toward the end of his sojourn 



30 KOUSSEAU 

at Bossey, namely, his being cruelly punished for a 
slight offence, — which, moreover, he stoutly main- 
tained to the end of his days that he did not commit, 
— may be traced the origin of another doctrine of 
his, namely, that what confuses, degrades, and blasts 
human nature is discipline, the restraining or curbing 
of the natural impulses. The effect of this incident 
may be described in his own words : " Here came to 
an end the serenity of my childish life. From that 
moment I ceased to enjoy pure happiness, and to-day 
I feel that the recollection of the charms of my child- 
hood stops there. We remained some months longer 
at Bossey; but we were as we are told the first man 
was, when, though still in the earthly paradise, he 
was no longer able to enjoy it; it was apparently the 
same situation, but in reality it was another mode of 
being. Attachment, respect, intimacy, confidence no 
longer bound the pupils to their guides; we no longer 
regarded them as gods who could read our hearts ; we 
were less ashamed to do evil and more afraid of being 
accused; we began to hide, to mutiny, to lie. All the 
vices of our years corrupted our innocence and dis- 
figured our games. The very country lost in our eyes 
that charm of sweetness and simplicity which touches 
the heart; it looked deserted and gloomy to us; it had 
covered itself with a veil, which hid its beauties from 
us. We no longer cultivated our little gardens, our 
herbs, our flowers. We no longer went to scratch the 
earth lightly, and shout with joy at discovering the 
germ of the seed we had sown. We were disgusted 
with life; our guardians were disgusted with us. My 
uncle withdrew us, and we parted with Mr. and Miss 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 31 

Lambercier feeling that we had had enough of each 
other, and with small regret." 

It would surely be impossible to write a severer 
criticism than this upon the sentimental, undisci- 
plined, unmoral education which Kousseau, up to this 
time, had received, and which he afterwards put for- 
ward as the type of true education. So frail is it 
that a single experience of what he conceives to be 
injustice dashes the whole to pieces, turns his world 
into a desert, and sinks him in every sort of vice of 
which his age is capable — including even that of 
lasciviousness, prematurely developed in his ebul- 
liently emotional nature, long nourished on senti- 
mental romances. It is sad that we must allude to 
this painful subject here; but, unless we do, we 
cannot give a correct or fair account either of the 
man or of his teachings. He himself tells us that 
there ran in his veins "blood burning with sensuality 
almost from his birth," and, though he professes to 
have remained pure in action till late in youth, this 
is contradicted by facts which he relates. The truth 
is, his imagination was corrupt from early childhood, 
and he was a victim not only of sensibility, but 
of the demon sensuality, all the days of his life. 
Though this fact may move our pity, its effect upon 
his writings must not be ignored. 

After leaving Bossey, at the age of ten, Eousseau 
remained, for a couple of years, along with his cousin, 
in the house of his uncle at Geneva. Here the two 
boys, mixing with no other children, attending no 
school, and having no definite tasks, made life a per- 
petual holiday devoted to amusement. They made 



32 ROUSSEAU 

kites, cages, drums, houses, bows, watches, mario- 
nettes. For the last they composed comedies, which 
later on they exchanged for sermons. Eousseau occa- 
sionally visited his father, who was settled at Nyon 
in the Pays de Vaud. Here he was petted and feted 
by everybody, fell violently in love with several inju- 
dicious women of twice his age, sighed, wept, and 
went into hysterics over them, and was rewarded 
sometimes with candy. With all this, he remained a 
mere mass of impulses, ever tending to become more 
and more unruly, violent, and sensual, and without 
one ray of moral sense to guide them. So far, duty 
had played no part in his purely animal existence; so 
far, he had received no preparation for a human life. 
And such a life, a life involving regular habits, con- 
stant application, obedience, and self-denial, he was 
now about to be called on to lead. In a word, he had 
to learn a profession. 

At first, when hardly twelve years old, he was 
placed in a notary's office; but found his occupation 
there so tiresome and unendurable that, though he 
did not show any signs of active rebellion, he was 
dismissed for ignorance and incapacity. He was 
then, in a crestfallen condition, apprenticed to an 
engraver, "a, coarse, violent man," by whom he was 
treated as negligent and unruly apprentices usually 
were. "In a short time," says Rousseau, "he suc- 
ceeded in tarnishing all the brightness of my child- 
hood, in brutalizing my loving, vivacious character, 
and in reducing me, in spirit as well as in fortune, to 
the true condition of an apprentice." . . . "The 
vilest tastes and the lowest rascality took the place 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 33 

of my pleasant amusements, blotting them entirely 
from my mind. I must, despite a most sterling 
(honnite) education, have had a great tendency to de- 
generation; for this took place rapidly, and without 
the least difficulty.'" . . . "My master's tyranny 
finally . . . drove me to vices vv^hich otherwise I 
should have hated, such as lying, idleness, and theft." 
Comment on this is unnecessary, especially when we 
find Rousseau taking credit to himself for having but 
once stolen money — which he did at the age of forty! 
Lying he frequently pleads guilty to, not to speak of 
idleness. Yet he was not altogether idle at this time; 
for, in order to escape from the real world of work 
and duty, to which he neither then nor at any time 
knew how to adapt himself, he threw himself into 
the unreal world of romance, devouring, with the 
nervous excitement of his childish days, every thril- 
ling or sentimental story he could beg or borrow. 

His apprenticeship lasted about four years, and 
came to an end in a sudden and unexpected way. 
Having remained outside the city one night till after 
the gates were shut, and having been threatened by 
his master with severe chastisement for such offence, 
he resolved, rather than expose himself to this, to 
leave both his master and his home, and seek his 
fortune, as a knight-errant, in the wide world. His 
cousin, whose friendship had visibly cooled as Rous- 
seau degenerated, made him a few presents, encour- 
aged him in his resolution, and " left him without 
many tears." They never afterwards met or cor- 
responded. 

It was in 1728, when Rousseau was about sixteen 



34 ROUSSEAU 

years old, that he resolved to become a " tramp, " — 
for such, in very deed, he became. That he should 
do this need not surprise us. It was the logical out- 
come of his character and training, or, rather, want 
of training. It is training that tits us to be members 
of social institutions, and he had received no such 
thing, but had been left to follow his natural instincts, 
which were abnormally strong. Though he had been 
caged for a time, the only life he was prepared to lead 
was that of the wild bird, and to this he now, having 
made his escape, naturally enough betook himself. 
He was now to chirp and chatter, to fly hither and 
thither, as hunger and caprice might direct, to coo 
and make love and pilfer, utterly unaware that there 
is such a thing in the world as duty or self-denial. 
His master he blamed for everything. " Had I fallen 
into the hands of a better," he wrote, nearly forty 
years afterwards, "I should have passed, in the 
bosom of my religion, my country, my family, and 
my friends, a quiet, peaceable life, such as my nature 
demanded, amid regular work suited to my taste, and 
a society suited to my heart. I should have been a 
good Christian, a good citizen, a good husband and 
father, a good friend, a good workman, good in every- 
thing. I should have loved my calling, honored it 
perhaps; and, after having lived an obscure and 
simple, but quiet and even life, I should have died 
in peace in the bosom of my people. Soon forgot- 
ten, no doubt, I should have been regretted at least 
as long as I should have been remembered." The 
whole of Jean-Jacques is here. He would have been 
"good," as anybody can be, had he always found 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 35 

everything suited to liis "taste" and "heart," that 
is, pleasant and attractive; but of heroic, moral good- 
ness, in the midst of circumstances offending both taste 
and heart, he had not even a conception. Hence, 
when he found himself in sucli circumstances, he was 
bad, ready to shirk even the simplest and most sacred 
duties, and to descend to the utmost baseness. 

It would be uncharitable to speak in this way of 
Rousseau, even though we but repeat his own state- 
ment, without good reason. But in the present in- 
stance such reason exists. His educational system 
has its chief source in his own experiences, tastes, 
and character, and cannot be appreciated in its moral 
bearings without an impartial presentation of these. 
By publishing his Confessions, moreover, he has in- 
vited us to make this presentation, which we can thus 
do without laying ourselves open to any charge of 
circulating malicious gossip or slander. In judging 
him as a man, we may allow him to put in the plea 
of King Lear, whom, indeed, he resembles in many 

ways : — 

" I am a man 
More siiin'd against than sinning." 

After running away from his master, home, and 
relatives, Rousseau lingered for a short time in the 
neighborhood of Geneva, getting food and shelter as 
best he could, and rioting in the sense of animal 
liberty and romantic visions of a future career of 
pure, ebullient enjoyment suited to his "taste and 
heart." Here is one of them: "My moderation 
limited me to a narrow sphere, but one deliciously 
choice, in which I was sure to reign. A single castle 



36 EOUSSEAU 

bounded my ambition; favorite of the lord and lady, 
lover of the daughter, friend of the brother, and pro- 
tector of the neighbors — that was enough; I asked 
no more." In the course of his rambles he passed 
over into Savoy, and at Confignon, finding himself 
penniless and hungry, he called upon the cure, a zeal- 
ous Roman Catholic, who, by means of a good dinner 
and a bottle of wine, converted him to Catholicism. 
Rousseau always maintained that he received a most 
careful religious education; the above fact shows how 
much it meant to a sensuous nature destitute of moral 
discipline. To make sure of his proselyte, whose 
weaknesses he must have seen through, M. de Pont- 
verre sent him, with a letter of introduction, to a 
recent convert, Madame de Warens, a person of many 
attractions and easy virtue, residing at Annecy. This 
lady, who lived on a pension from the King of Sar- 
dinia, received him kindly, fed and lodged him, and 
would gladly have given him a permanent home, 
which, as he fell in love with her at first sight, he 
would, no doubt, have accepted. But interested 
friends of hers succeeded in driving him away, and 
transporting him across the Alps to a monastery in 
Turin, there to undergo spiritual instruction and be 
formally received into the bosom of the Church. If, 
during his week's journey to Turin, he was in the 
seventh heaven of romantic ecstasy and hope, he found 
himself in quite another place on his arrival there. 
When the iron gate of the Hospice of the Catechu- 
mens closed behind him, he found himself in a gloomy 
prison, among men and women of the most degraded 
type, all paying with pretended conversion for a 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 37 

temporary subsistence. His account of his life 
there, and of his spiritual guides, beggars belief. 
His sojourn lasted but nine days,^ at the end of 
which he solemnly abjured Protestantism, "received 
the accessories of baptism," and was admitted into the 
Church with gorgeous and edifying pomp. Then he 
was turned out into the street amid pious wishes, and 
with twenty francs of alms in his pocket. His ro- 
mantic dreams had given place to a brutal reality. 

Still he was not daunted. Finding food and lodg- 
ing for a few cents a day, he idled as long as he could, 
scouring the city in all directions. When his purse 
was nearly empty, he tried to find work as an en- 
graver, and, after many failures, managed to ingra- 
tiate himself with an attractive young shopkeeper, 
whose husband was at the time absent. He, of course, 
fell at once violently in love with her, and had hopes 
of reciprocation, when the husband returned, ordered 
him out of the house, and threatened him with a yard- 
stick whenever he again came near it. A few days 
later, he found a place, as half-lackey, half-secretary, 
with a very worthy and gifted lady, whose only defect 
seems to have been that she kept him in his place and 
did not coquette with him. When, after a time, she 
died of cancer, he took the opportunity to steal a 
valuable ribbon, and when it was found in his posses- 
sion, he said it had been given to him by a fellow- 
servant,^ a young girl, it seems, of irreproachable 

1 Rousseau would have us believe that he was altogether three 
months in the hospice ; but this, like-many other things in the Con- 
fessions, is demonstrably incorrect. 

2 His reason for this, he says, was that, liking the girl and mean- 
ing to give her the ribbon, he had her in his mind ! 



38 ROUSSEAU 

character, and stuck to his lie, even in the presence of 
the girl, and notwithstanding her despairing appeals 
to him. He gained belief simply because no one was 
found bad-hearted enough to conceive any one capable 
of such cruel lying. Indeed, it seems hardly possible 
to descend to a lower depth of infamy than this, or to 
furnish a more drastic commentary on the sort of 
education which Rousseau received and advocated. 
And this is the man who is continually taking credit 
to himself for his chivalrous devotion to women, and 
speaking of them in the most effusive terras! The 
compunction which, in his Confessions, he so elo- 
quently parades, only shows the value of rhetorical 
morality. 

After leaving the house of Madame de Vercellis, 
Eousseau for a time prowled about the streets of 
Turin, often performing acts of so disgusting a nature 
that one wonders why he was not shut iip in a mad- 
house. Once he was mobbed by an indignant crowd 
and escaped only by a barefaced lie. At the same 
time he was visiting a certain Abbe Gaime, who talked 
to him very seriously, gave him wise counsels, and 
made such an impression upon him as to be immortal- 
ized later in the Vicaire Savoyard. 

At last a situation was found for him. The Comte 
de la Roque, a nephew of Madame de Vercellis, intro- 
duced him to the Comte de Gouvon, head of a noble 
family, who took him into his house as lackey, and 
promised to do better things for him. Here he was 
treated with great kindness, received instruction in 
Latin from the count's nephew, and for a while con- 
ducted himself satisfactorily, hoping, in course of 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 39 

time, to find his way into the good graces of the 
count's charming niece. Failing in this, and sud- 
denly conceiving an ardent attachment for an old 
acquaintance of his apprenticeship days, he neglected 
his duties and his studies, was dismissed from his 
place, refused an offer to be taken back, and the two 
started off, with light-hearted glee, to resume the life 
of tramps. Kousseau recalled the delights of his 
journey to Turin. "What must it be," he thought, 
"when to the charm of independence is united that 
of travelling in company with a comrade of my own 
age, taste, and good humor, without formalities, ivith- 
out duty, without constraint, without any obligation 
to travel or to stop, except as we please. One would 
be a fool, indeed, to sacrifice such a chance for pro- 
jects of ambition slow of realization, difficult, uncer- 
tain, and which, even if one day realized, were not, in 
all their glory, worth a quarter of an hour of true 
youthful pleasure and liberty." 

The two young men had little money; but they 
hoped to make enough for board and lodging, by ex- 
hibiting a gimcrack, a Hiero's-fountain, in country 
taverns and bar-rooms. Disappointed in this, they 
nevertheless continued their tramp, with great jollity, 
across the Alps, arriving finally at Chambery, ragged 
and almost shoeless. Here Eousseau, having made 
up his mind to return to Madame de Warens, with 
whom he had corresponded during his three years' 
stay in Turin, and not wishing to take his companion 
with him, began to treat him coolly, and the latter, 
taking the hint, embraced him, bade him good-bye, 
turned on his heel, and walked gayly off. The two 



40 ROUSSEAU 

never afterwards met. Their ardent friendship had 
lasted six weeks. 

Madame de Warens, though surprised to see her 
protege, whose fortune she had supposed made, come 
back to her in rags, nevertheless received him kindly, 
lodged him in her house, and, much to his chagrin, 
tried to prepare him for some sort of regular work. 
What he wanted was to dawdle about with her, to be 
caressed and petted, to follow the dear caprice of the 
moment, and to have no duties or definite employment. 
As Madame de Warens, at that time, hardly cared to 
be so completely absorbed, he was sent to a seminary 
to learn a little Latin, as a preparation for the priest- 
hood. He hated his first teacher, but formed an 
ardent attachment for his second, who was weak and 
sentimental, but sympathetic.^ In spite of this, 
Rousseau made little progress, and was soon dis- 
missed for incapacity. He was thus thrown back on 
the hands of Madame de Warens, than which he de- 
sired nothing better. Music was next tried, with no 
better success, notwithstanding that he had great 
sensuous delight in it. He had not patience or per- 
sistence enough to learn even the rudiments of it, and 
was too vain to accept instruction from teachers. At 
last, Madame de Warens, getting tired, adopted a 
scheme to get rid of him. She sent him off to Lyons 
to accompany home a well-known musician of some- 
what irregular habits, and during his absence went off 
to Paris without leaving any address behind. Eous- 
seau deserted the musician in a fainting-fit in the 

1 Along with the Turinese M. Gaime, this man, M. Gatier, went 
to form the portrait of the Savoyard Vicar. See p. 38. 



EOUSSEAU'S LIFE 41 

streets of Lyons, ^ and hastened back to his dear 
"mamma," ^ as he called her. 

Finding her gone, he " loafed " about Annecy for a 
time, in somewhat disreputable company, and then 
started off to convoy home to Freiburg Madame de 
Wareus' maid, whom, with his characteristic vanity 
in such matters, he supposed to be deeply in love with 
him. On the way he called, at Nyon, on his father, 
who had married again, and had a satisfactorily affect- 
ing scene with him. Being, contrary to his expecta- 
tion, coolly received by his companion's family, and 
finding himself without money, he went to Lausanne, 
persuaded a kindly innkeeper to board and lodge him 
on credit,^ gave himself out as a Parisian, changed 
his name, and set up as a music teacher. His almost 
complete ignorance of music having soon been dis- 
covered, he, of course, made a ridiculous failure, and 
soon left for Neuchatel. On the way he had a fine 
opportunity for Arcadian longings and self-pity. " I 
must absolutely have an orchard on the banks of this 
lake (Lake of Geneva), and of no other. I must have 
a firm friend, a sweet wife, a cow, and a little boat. 
Till I have all these, I shall never enjoy complete 
happiness on earth." . . . "I sighed and cried like 
a baby. How often, sitting down on a big stone to 

1 " He was abandoned by the only friend on whom he had a right 
to count. I seized a moment when nobody was thinking of me, 
turned the corner of the street, and disappeared." — Confessions, 
Bk. I., Cap. III. 

^ Maman. She called him "Baby" {Petit). This was exactly 
the relation that suited him. Cf. Confessions, Bk. I., Cap. II. 

3 " I told him my little lies, as I had arranged them." — Confes- 
sions, Bk. IV. 



42 ROUSSEAU 

weep at leisure, did I amuse myself by watching my 
tears fall into the water! " At Neuchatel he repeated 
his experiment with somewhat better success than at 
Lausanne ; but, having one day fallen in with a Greek 
archimandrite, who was collecting subscriptions to 
restore tlie Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, he was glad 
to follow him as interpreter, with the prospect of 
much aimless wandering and good dinners. At 
Soleure, liowever, the French minister, having sat- 
isfied himself that the archimandrite was a fraud, 
sent him about his business, and took charge of Rous- 
seau, who still pretended to be a Parisian. Having 
heard the youth's story (Rousseau was now about 
twenty), he gave him a hundred francs and sent him 
off to Paris — home, as he thouglit ! — to be attendant 
to a young officer in the guards. During the fort- 
niglit which Rousseau took to reach Paris on foot, he 
had a royal time, filling himself full of visions of 
future military glory, and then allowing them to 
vanish in the more passive delights of idyllic land- 
scape. Paris, of which he had heard so much, com- 
pletely disappointed him, and, as his reception there 
was not over cordial, he soon left it and trudged 
southward, hoping somewhere to find his "mamma." 
During this journey, he was once more in the seventh 
heaven, although here and there he encountered ex- 
periences which tended to sober him, and which made 
a lasting and fruitful impression upon him. Having 
one day entered a peasant's house and asked for din- 
ner, offering to pay, he received nothing but skimmed 
milk and coarse barley bread, the man declaring that 
lie had nothing else. In course of time, however, 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 43 

feeling tliat his guest would not betray him, the man 
opened a trap-door in the floor, descended, and re- 
turned with a ham, some good white bread, and a 
bottle of wine, on which, together with an omelette, 
Rousseau made a royal dinner. The peasant then 
explained to him that, in order to avoid ruin at the 
hands of the tax-gatherer, he was obliged to feign 
abject poverty. " All that he said to me on this sub- 
ject," writes Rousseau, "was absolutely new to me, 
and made an impression that will never be wiped out. 
This was the germ of that inextinguishable hatred 
which grew up in my heart against the vexations 
endured by the unhappy people and against their 
oppressors." 

Having, when he reached Lyons, sought out a 
friend of Madame de Warens', he learnt that she was 
at Chambery, and would be glad to see him, having 
found for him a pleasant occupation that would not 
separate him from her. He hastened to find her; but, 
though offered a horse, he walked all the way. This 
was his last long journey on foot, the end of his vaga- 
bondage, which had lasted four years. He tells us 
that, though often poor afterwards, he never again 
had to go without a meal. 

And here it is to be noted that this vagabondage 
had done five things for him: (1) It had satisfied his 
lust for adventure, and made him willing to settle 
down to a quiet life; (2) it had dispelled all the 
glamor attaching to courts, castles, palaces, and 
high life, and awakened in him a profound and en- 
during passion for rural simplicity; (3) it had made 
him acquainted, as hardly anything else could have 



44 ROUSSEAU 

done, with the character, lives, needs, and sufferings 
of the common people, and awakened in him a lively 
sympathy for them; (4) it had inspired him with a 
passionate love of natural scenery, such as no one 
before him had ever felt; so that he may fairly be 
called the inventor of the modern love of nature, the 
inspirer of the nature-poets of all lands; (5) it had 
made his language the expression of genuine passion 
and first-hand experience, and so given it a force 
which no style formed by reading or study ever can 
have. All these things told in the future. 

For nine years, from 1732 to 1741, Rousseau spent 
the greater part of his time " at home, " that is, with 
his " mamma." For four years they lived in Chambery 
in a gloomy old house, under the most extraordinary 
conditions, and the most immoral, that it is well 
possible to conceive; for Madame de Warens had 
apparently no trace of moral sense. For two years 
Rousseau was employed in the public surveyor's 
office ; but, as he found every sort of regular employ- 
ment irksome and intolerable, he finally threw up his 
place and fell back upon his *' mamma's " hands. After 
a season of blessed idleness, he once more took to 
teaching music, with a little better success this time. 
Most of his pupils were young ladies of good family, 
and he made a point of falling in love with nearly 
every one of them, as well as sometimes with their 
mothers and aunts. Observing this, and fearing for 
his morals, Madame de Warens ceased to treat him as 
a baby and admitted him to the closest intimacy. On 
the death of her other intimate, some time after- 
wards, Rousseau undertook to conduct her financial 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 45 

affairs, which, on account of her recklessness and her 
devotion to quacks and quackery, were rapidly falling 
to irretrievable ruin. He only made them worse, tak- 
ing advantage of her recklessness like the rest. To 
make matters worse, partly owing to certain acci- 
dents, and partly to his own morbid imagination, 
nursed on laziness, his health gave way and he became 
an invalid for Madame de Warens to nurse. Being 
fond of the country, he persuaded her to leave Cham- 
bery in the summer, and rent a cottage outside — the 
famous Charmettes. Here he had everything his own 
way, and for a time enjoyed perfect bliss. He had 
his trees and Howers, his pigeons and bees, his mis- 
tress and his books. His " languors " and " vapors " 
gave him an excuse for avoiding all effort or trying to 
earn anything, and so, for nearly a couple of years, 
he dallied away his time, helping to devour the little 
that remained of his poor mistress' pension, not to 
speak of her patience. It is true that, to while away 
the time, he did contrive to do a good deal of very 
desultory reading, in all sorts of subjects, — geometry, 
algebra, Latin, astronomy, and even philosophy. He 
dabbled in Locke, Malebranche, Leibniz, Descartes, 
and the Port Eoyal Logic. He even read some the- 
ology, and was on the way to a wholesome fear of 
hell, but was turned back by the comfortable optimism 
of his mistress.^ At last, both he and she desired a 
change. He, having dabbled in physiology, came to 

1 It was a favorite idea of his that " the interesting and sensible 
conversations of a worthy woman are better suited to form the 
character of a young man than all the pedantic philosophy of 
books." — Confessions, Bk. I., Cap. IV. 



46 EOUSSEAU 

think that his languors were due to polypus of the 
heart, and she encouraged him to go to Montpellier 
to be cured, starting him off in a sedan chair, as he 
was too feeble to ride ! On the way, he fell into the 
most vulgar sort of intrigue with a coarse woman, 
and quite forgot his mamma — and his polypus. He, 
nevertheless, went to Montpellier and frittered away 
some months there. When his money was exhausted, 
he started off to join his new mistress ; but, on coming 
to a point where the road to her parted from the road 
to his mamma, he virtuously chose the latter! His 
account of this deserves to be quoted: "As I ap- 
proached Saint Esprit, I made up my mind to give 
Saint Andiol the go-by, and go straight on. I carried 
out this resolution courageously, with some sighs, I 
admit, but also with the inner satisfaction, tvhicJi I 
tasted for the first time in my life, of being able to say: 
'I deserve my own good opinion; I know how to pre- 
fer my duty to my pleasure.' This was the first real 
obligation I owed to study. This it was that had 
taught me to reflect and compare." . . . "One ad- 
vantage of good actions is that they elevate the soul 
and dispose it to do better ones; for human weakness 
is such that one must count among good actions every 
abstinence from evil that one is tempted to commit. 
As soon as I had made up my mind, I became an- 
other man." We must not despise the day of small 
things ! 

It is well that virtue is its own reward; for in this 
case there was no other. On reaching the house of 
his "mamma," he was coolly received, and found that 
his place had been taken — taken by a travelling wig- 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 47 

maker of brusque, noisy ways. With a bleeding 
heart, he tells us, he voluntarily gave up his rights. 
" I kept this resolution with a firmness, I venture to 
say, worthy of the feeling which inspired it." . . . 
"The ardent desire to see her happy, at any price, 
absorbed all my affections." . . . "Thus began to 
spring up, with my misfortunes, those virtues of 
which the seeds lay in the depths of my soul, which 
study had cultivated, and which only awaited the 
influence {ferment) of adversity to bring them to 
fruition." In spite of his disappointment, Rousseau 
remained for some time with Madame de Warens; 
but at last, finding his position intolerable, went off 
to Lyons, to be tutor to the sons of M. de Mably, 
brother of the famous Condillac. In this capacity he 
was not a success, "having but three instruments, 
always useless, and often hurtful, with children, — 
sentiment, reasoning, anger." He seems, however, to 
have retained the good opinion of his employer, and 
he made several important acquaintances which were 
valuable to him in the future. His morals, too, 
improved somewhat ; he stole nothing but wine. He 
kept his place for a year, and then, as usual, returned 
to his " mamma, " who, though she treated him kindly, 
showed no desire to retain him. Nevertheless, he 
remained with her for some time; but, seeing that 
the renewal of the old relations was impossible, and 
that she was drifting to ruin, he at last left her, re- 
solved to try his fortune in Paris, and hoping, — we 
may well believe sincerely, — if he were successful, 
to return and relieve her at a later time. 

Here, in 1741, at the age of twenty-nine, Rousseau 



48 ROUSSEAU 

passes, almost suddenly, from the dependent and pas- 
sive period of his life to the independent and produc- 
tive. Looking back upon the former, he says : " We 
have seen my peaceful youth glide by in a quiet, not 
ungentle sort of existence, without great troubles or 
great prosperities. This absence of extremes was, in 
large degree, due to my ardent but feeble tempera- 
ment, slow to undertake and quick to be discouraged, 
shaking off inaction by tits and starts, but always re- 
turning to it from lassitude or taste ; a temperament 
which, continually drawing me far away from great 
virtues and yet further from great vices, to the indo- 
lent, quiet life, for which I felt myself born, never 
permitted me to rise to anything great, in the way 
either of good or of evil." Though, after what we 
have seen, it is impossible to agree with the author in 
this indulgent estimate of himself, it nevertheless 
contains much truth. For the first thirty years of 
his life, Eousseau was a bundle of ardent desires, 
undisciplined by either serious reflection or moral 
training. He responded to outward impressions 
exactly as an animal does, restrained, if at all, only 
by fear. So utterly unaware was he that there is 
such a thing in the world as morality or duty, that it 
seems almost unfair to apply any moral standard to 
his actions. He is the natural man, pure and simple, 
with egoistic and altruistic instincts of a merely sen- 
suous, not to say sensual, kind. He has gone back to 
the state of nature; he is a savage living among civil- 
ized men, and adapting himself to their standards as 
far as he must. He is lying, faithless, slanderous, 
thievish, lascivious, indecent, cruel, cowardly, self- 



EOUSSEAU'S LIFE 49 

ish. Only toward the end do germs of nobler things 
begin to appear. Into what grotesque and portentous 
forms these developed, in the spongy soil of passion, 
and under the bitter rain of adversity, we shall see 
in the next chapter. 

< G 



CHAPTER III 

ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 

(2) Productive Period (1741-1778) 

I knew that all my talent came from a certain warmth of 
soul regarding the subjects I had to treat, and that it was only 
the love of the great, the true, and the good that could animate 
my genius. ... I have never been able to write except from 
passion. 

Rousseau, Confessions, Bk. X. 

Rousseau's early education, failing to discipline 
his instincts, and leaving him in a state of animal 
spontaneity, had produced the man whom we have 
seen. Toward his thirtieth year, thanks partly to 
poor health, partly to rather extensive reading, he 
began, as we have seen, to realize his condition and to 
have dim glimpses, still in a sensuous way indeed, of 
a higher. His sated sensuality made him think of 
hell, while the vague thrill of delight which he felt 
in the presence of sublime nature was objectified into 
a god.^ At all events, he began to make good reso- 
lutions, which is the first step in moral life. And he 

1 See Confessions, Pt. I., Bk. VI. It is perhaps worth noting 
that this is exactly the god of Faust, at the time when he is trying 
to ruin Gretchen. " Feeling is all," he says, at the close of a gush 
of immoral sentimentality. The result proves the moral value of 
such a god. Rousseau sat for much in the portrait of Faust. 

50 



EOUSSEAU'S LIFE 61 

was now about to enter a new school, very conducive 
to such life, — the school of experience, which, as Jean 
Paul says, is an excellent schoolmistress, though the 
fees are rather high. 

In turning his face to Paris, Rousseau meant to win 
distinction and fortune as a musician. He had made 
considerable progress in musical knowledge and even 
aspired to be a composer. The idea of literary 
authorship had hardly yet dawned upon him. On 
his way he stopped at Lyons, where he obtained 
several letters of introduction, and had a momentary, 
but violent, love-spasm, which, however, did not 
detain him. **I reached Paris," he says, "in the 
autumn of 1741, with fifteen louis of ready money 
in my pocket, my comedy Narcisse, and my musical 
project as my sole resources. Having, therefore, no 
time to lose, I made haste to take advantage of my 
letters of introduction." He was well received. 
His "musical project," which was nothing less than 
a new system of musical notation, was presented to 
the Academy of Sciences, but failed to meet with the 
recognition he had expected. His Narcisse, though 
praised by Fontenelle and Diderot, with whom, among 
other notabilities, he had become intimate, was not 
then brought on the stage. He consequently relapsed, 
with a kind of desperate delight, into his habitual 
indolence, and would soon have been reduced to ab- 
ject poverty, had not a wise Jesuit father advised him 
to try his fortune with the ladies. He did so, and, 
notwithstanding his incurable awkwardness and rus- 
ticity of manner, and his fatal habit of making effu- 
sive love to every woman he met, no matter what her 



62 ROUSSEAU 

rank or age, he was able, through one of his patron- 
esses, Madame de Broglie, to obtain a situation as 
secretary to a recently appointed ambassador to Ven- 
ice, the Comte de Montaigu. In this position, which 
brought him in contact with diplomatic and political 
life — in a word, with the " great world " — for the first 
time, he seems to have conducted himself with energy 
and firmness, though not always with prudence, aaid 
he retained it for eighteen months. He finally quar- 
relled with the ambassador, who was an incompetent, 
negligent coxcomb, and returned to France — without 
his salary. For a long time all his endeavors to 
obtain this were in vain — a fact which made a deep 
impression on him. *'The injustice and uselessness," 
he says, " of my complaints left in my soul a germ of 
indignation against our stupid civil institutions, in 
which the true good of the public and real justice are 
always sacrificed to some indefinable, apparent order, 
in reality destructive of all order, and merely adding 
the sanction of public authority to the oppression of 
the weak and the iniquity of the strong." And this 
was not the only profound impression made on him 
by his sojourn in Venice. In his official life, he 
learnt the hollowness and corruption of diplomacy 
and officialism; in his private life, in which he saw 
much of the seamy side of Venice, he came to close 
quarters with forms of depravity that disgusted even 
his not over-healthy sensuality, and touched his 
better nature. He returned from " the most immoral 
of cities" a somewhat sobered and reflective man,^ 

1 A letter which he wrote to a lady who received him badly on 
his return, because he had dared to quarrel with an ambassador, 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 53 

and, what is more, with a little sense of his own per- 
sonal dignity as a man. 

On his return to Paris, Rousseau resumed his 
Bohemian life. For a short time he lived with a 
much-admired Spanish friend; but, on his departure, 
desiring to enjoy entire independence, he moved to a 
little inn near the Luxembourg, meaning to resume 
his musical studies and composition. His landlady 
was a woman of the coarsest sort, and most of the 
guests, Irish or Gascons, were like her, Rousseau 
being the only decent person among them! They 
were waited upon by a poor, hard-working girl, 
named Therese Le Vasseur, from Orleans, who soon 
became the butt of all the coarse ribaldry of the 
house. Rousseau alone took her part; a sympathy 
sprang up between them, which soon passed into 
what he called love, and in a few days the ex- 
secretary of the Venetian embassy, wishing to find a 
successor to his "mamma," as he says, made the poor 
creature his wife, in all but the name. He promised 
never to abandon her, and never to marry her, and he 
kept his word to his dying day, from 1744 to 1778. 
There is no accounting for tastes; and there is no 
doubt that Rousseau found in his Therese, who had 

reveals his state of mind at this time. Here are some extracts : " I 
am sorry, madam ; I have made a mistake. I thought you just : I 
ought to have remembered that you are noble. I ought to have felt 
that it is unbecoming in me, a plebeian, to make claims against a 
gentleman. Have I ancestors, titles ? Is equity without parchment 
equity ? " . . . " If he [the ambassador] has no dignity of soul, it is 
because his nobility enables him to be without it ; if he is hand in 
glove with all that is filthiest in the most immoral of cities ; if he 
is the chum of pickpockets ; if he is one himself, it is because his 
ancestors had honor instead of him." 



54 ROUSSEAU 

few personal charms, and who could never tell the 
time on a clock-face, remember the order of the 
months, or give change for a franc, what was per- 
manently congenial to his sensuous, indolent nature. 
What he wanted was not stimulation or intellectual 
companionship, but steady, unexacting affection, and 
the thousand little soothing attentions that are quite 
compatible with gross stupidity. These he found, 
and his loyalty to her through all changes of fortune, 
amid good and evil repute, is perhaps the noblest 
trait in his whole life. What mattered it to him that 
other persons saw in her only coarseness and greed? 
he was content. "In the presence of those we love," 
he says, "feeling nourishes the intelligence, as well 
as the heart, and there is no need to go elsewhere in 
quest of ideas. I lived with my Therese as agreeably 
as with the finest genius in the world." ... "I saw 
that she loved me sincerely, and this redoubled my 
tenderness. This intimacy took the place of every- 
thing for me. The future did not touch me, or 
touched me only as the present prolonged. I desired 
only to insure its duration. This attachment rendered 
all other sorts of dissipation superfluous and insipid. 
I went out only to visit Therese : her home became 
almost mine." 

Eousseau's relation to Therese did one thing, at 
least, for him; it steadied him, and gave him peace 
to work. So he toiled away at musical composition, 
and tried, through his friends, to bring his work 
before the public, but without success. Discouraged 
at last, and having to provide, not only for himself, 
but also for Therese and her whole family, he attached 



ROUSSEAU'S LITE 55 

himself, in a somewhat nondescript capacity, to cer- 
tain wealthy patrons, who gave him a small salary. 
With these he passed the autumn of 1747 at the castle 
of Chenonceau, on the Cher, in great luxury; but, 
when he returned, a great surprise awaited him. His 
Therese was about to give birth to a child — an event 
for which he was not at all prepared. And here the 
worst side of his character, his utter want of any 
sense of moral responsibility and natural affection, 
came to the surface. As soon as the child was born, 
it was sent, despite the heartbroken remonstrances of 
the mother, to the foundling hospital, and was never 
again seen or recognized by its parents. We may 
anticipate somewhat, by adding that four other chil- 
dren, born to them later, all shared the same fate. 
With all his gushing sentimentality and sensuous 
sympathy, Rousseau recoiled from the tenderest, 
sweetest, and most sacred of all human duties, — the 
nurture and training of his own offspring. Speaking 
of the exposure of his second child, he says : " Not a 
bit more reflection on my part; not a bit more ap- 
proval on the part of the mother. She groaned and 
obeyed." And this was the man who could not see 
her gibed by the Irish and Gascon abbes ! 

About this time, Eousseau became acquainted with 
Madame d'^fipinay and Mademoiselle de Bellegarde, 
afterwards Comtesse d'Houdetot, both of whom were 
destined to play important parts in his life. Now 
also, mainly through his connection with the Abbe 
Condillac and Diderot, he began to think of literary 
composition, and planned a periodical to be called Le 
Persijleur, which, luckily, never saw the light. He 



56 ROUSSEAU 

did, however, write the article on Music for the En- 
cyclopedie, which Diderot and D' Alembert were at that 
time preparing to issue. The progress of this work 
was interrupted by the arrest and imprisonment of 
the former, on account of his Letter on the Blind. 
Confined at first in the donjon at Vincennes, Diderot 
was afterwards, on his parole, allowed the liberty of 
the castle and park, and here his wife and friends 
visited him. Among the most enthusiastic of the 
latter was Kousseau, who went every other day. It 
was on one of these visits that an event occurred 
which affected his whole subsequent career, by throw- 
ing him into the path on which he gained both influ- 
ence and fame. It must be described in his own 
words : " The summer of 1749 was one of excessive 
heat. It is two leagues from Paris to Vincennes. 
Unable to pay for a cab, I started at two o'clock in 
the afternoon and walked, when I was alone, and I 
walked quick to arrive the sooner." ... "To moder- 
ate my pace, I resolved to carry some books with me. 
One day I took the Mercure de France, and, as I 
walked along reading it, my eye fell on this question, 
proposed by the Academy of Dijon as the subject of 
the following year's prize essay: Has the Progress of 
the Arts and Sciences contributed to corrupt or to purify 
Morals? On reading this, I instantly saw a new uni- 
verse, and became a new man." ... "If ever there 
was anything like a sudden inspiration, it was the 
movement that took place in me on that occasion. 
Instantly I felt my mind dazzled by a thousand 
lights. Crowds of brilliant ideas presented them- 
selves all at once, with a force and a confusion which 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 57 

threw me into an inexpressible tumult. I became as 
dizzy as if I had been intoxicated. I was seized with 
a violent palpitation which made my bosom heave. 
No longer able to breathe while I walked, I threw 
myself down under one of the trees of the avenue, 
and there remained for half an hour in such a state of 
agitation that, when I got up, I observed that the 
whole front of my vest was wet with my tears, though 
I was not aware that I had shed any. "... " If I 
could have written down a fourth part of what I felt 
and saw under that tree, with what clearness would I 
have exposed all the contradictions of our social sys- 
tem; with what force would I have laid bare all the 
abuses of our institutions; with what simplicity would 
I have proved that man is naturally good, and that 
it is solely through institutions that men become 
wicked! "... "On arriving at Vincennes, I was in 
a state of agitation bordering on delirium. Diderot 
perceived this. I told him the cause. He encour- 
aged me to give vent to my ideas and compete for the 
prize. I did so, and from that moment I was lost. 
All the rest of my life and misfortunes were the in- 
evitable result of this moment of bewilderment. My 
feelings rose, with utterly inconceivable rapidity, to 
the height of my ideas. All my petty passions were 
stifled by enthusiasm for truth, freedom, virtue; and 
what is yet more astonishing, this effervescence kept 
up in my heart for over four or five years, to a degree 
in which I have never known it to occur in the heart 
of any other man." ^ 

1 This translation is made partly from the Confessions, Pt. II., Bk. 
VIII., and partly from the second of the Letters to M. Malesherbes. 



58 ROUSSEAU 

Such is Kousseau's account of his conversion to 
literature and to the advocacy of truth, right, and 
liberty. Though we need not accept its details as 
literal facts, we may fairly say that this conversion 
was due, not to calm conviction, based upon long and 
profound reflection, but simply to the direction of 
his ardent and effusive imagination upon a new and 
attractive series of Arcadian pictures of quiet bliss, 
contrasted with the noisy and distressing scenes in 
which he found himself. His essay won the Dijon 
Academy's prize, and this encouraged him to continue 
writing. 

Meantime, he had hired a small apartment, fur- 
nished it, and taken Therese and her parents to live 
with him. Here he spent the next seven years, in a 
way which must be described in his own words: 
" The heart of my Therese was that of an angel. Our 
attachment increased with our intimacy, and we felt 
more and more every day how truly we were made 
for each other. If our pleasures could be described, 
they would excite a laugh by their simplicity: our 
private walks outside the city, where I munificently 
spent eight or ten cents at some alehouse; our little 
suppers by my window-sill, where we sat, face to face, 
on two chairs placed on a trunk which filled the 
embrasure. So placed, with the window as our table, 
we breathed the air, we could see the neighborhood 
and the passers-by, and, though on the fourth floor, 
look down into the street, while Ave ate. Who shall 
describe, who shall feel, the delights of those meals, 
consisting of nothing more than a quartern loaf of 
bread, a few cherries, a piece of cheese, and a half 



KOUSSEAU'S LIFE 59 

pint of wine, which we drank between us? Friend- 
ship, confidence, intimacy, sweetness of soul, how de- 
licious your relishes are ! Sometimes we remained 
there till midnight, without being aware of it, or noting 
the time, until the old mamma called our attention to 
it." In this description we find the old vagabond 
Rousseau, only transferred to a city garret, and, at 
the same time, that ideal qf a quiet, aimless, unen- 
terprising, dalliaut life, which underlies all his 
writings. 

In Paris, Rousseau, notwithstanding his mode of 
life, and his ebullient, intractable disposition, made 
many friends both in the fashionable and in the 
literary worlds, and was recognized as a rising man, 
both in music and in literature. His opera, Le 
Devin du Village, was played, with great success, 
before the king at Versailles, and would have earned 
him a pension had he played his cards well. His 
Narcisse likewise was performed. His essay on the 
Moral Effect of the Arts and Sciences had identified 
him with certain rather paradoxical principles and 
made him an object of universal curiosity, so that he 
now resolved to live up to these even in externals. 
He gave up a public ofiice which brought him a good 
salary, and took to earning his living by copying 
music. Another change must be described in his own 
words: "I began my reform with my dress. I left 
off gold facings and white stockings ; I put on a round 
wig; I laid aside my sword; I sold my watch, saying 
to myself, with incredible delight, 'Thank heaven, I 
shall no longer need to know what the time is ! ' " In 
doing this, Rousseau wished to show that he, once for 



60 ROUSSEAU 

all, identified himself with the common people, with 
wliom indeed his chief sympathies were. He was too 
immediate and capricious ever to school himself into 
the manners of polite society, or to find satisfaction 
in its hollow formalities, and he would have been 
wise had he avoided it altogether, as he did not. In 
1753 he wrote his second 'discourse ' — on the ques- 
tion, W/iat is the Origin of Inequality among Men, and 
is it authorized by the Natural Law? — which, though 
failing to win the Dijon prize, added to his reputation, 
and carried his thoughts further on in the direction 
in which they had for some time been moving — that 
of democracy. 

In spite of all these successes, Rousseau got weary 
of the close atmosphere of Paris, the obtrusive curi- 
osity of visitors, and the calls of social life, — all the 
more that he had for some time been suffering from 
a painful malady. Accordingly, in 1754, he paid a 
visit, in company with Therese, to his native city. 
On his way he went to see his " mamma, " whom he 
found a poverty-stricken wreck. "Then," he says, 
"was the moment to pay off my debts. I oiight to 
have left all and followed her, clinging to her till her 
last hour, and sharing whatever might be her fate. 
I did nothing. ... I groaned over her and did not 
follow her. " At Geneva, he met with an enthusiastic 
reception, returned, after twenty-six years of apos- 
tacy, to Protestantism, and was restored to his rights 
as a citizen. He even made up his mind to settle 
there for the rest of his life, and returned to Paris 
with the intention of preparing for so doing. Find- 
ing, however, that Voltaire, whose unfriendly influ- 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 61 

ence lie dreaded, had settled near Geneva, and that the 
Introduction to his second discourse, in which he had 
spoken of the Genevese constitution, had given offence 
to his countrymen, he changed his mind, and, having 
just then received from his friend, Madame d'Jfipinay, 
the offer of a home in the charming Hermitage, 
near Montmorency, he accepted, and in the spring of 
1756 removed thither, with Therese and her mother. 
The father, over eighty years of age, was packed off 
to the poorhouse, where he died almost immediately, 
to the great grief of Therese. 

Amid the delights of his new residence, Rousseau 
was for a while in the most ecstatic condition. He 
had money enough to live on for some time, a fair 
prospect of paying work, devoted friends, self-set 
tasks in which he delighted, and natural surroundings 
in which he could thrill and gush to his heart's con- 
tent. But this Avas too much. He did, indeed, con- 
tinue to copy music; but his other tasks were soon 
mostly abandoned or forgotten, while he gave himself 
up to his natural indolence and dreaming. AVith- 
drawing almost completely from society, he buried 
himself in the woods, and, with his morbid and lurid 
imagination, devoted himself to the creation of a 
Mohammedan paradise of sensual delights, in which 
he revelled day and night. From this time on, he 
never ceased to suffer from what may be called imagi- 
native insanity. The effects of this showed them- 
selves at the first touch with reality. Having been 
visited by the Comtesse d'Houdetot, the sister-in-law 
of his patroness, he at once enveloped her in all the 
products of his diseased imagination, and so conceived 



62 ROUSSEAU 

for her a frantic passion, whose depth he measured by 
the nervous derangement it caused in him, and the 
gush of passionate bombast it brought upon his lips.^ 
Madame d'Houdetot, however, having not only a 
husband, but a lover besides, while allowing him to 
gush, did not respond as he desired, and the only 
result of his folly was that he embroiled himself with 
Madame d'^^pinay, and many of his other friends. 
The former, a woman of very loose life, was jealous 
of her sister-in-law, while the latter, seeing the effect 
of solitude upon him, tried to induce him to return 
to Paris, or to separate from Therese, who, with her 
rapacious, deceitful mother, was bringing him to 
poverty, and becoming more and more a burden to 
him. For both women they undertook to provide. 
Eousseau, resenting all interference with his caprices, 
— they were nothing more, — suddenly left the Her- 
mitage, and accused his friends of having formed a 
conspiracy, for which he could never assign any 
motive, to ruin him. One can excuse him only by 
saying that he was emotionally insane. 

In the middle of December he moved with Therese 
to a rented cottage at Montmorency, having sent the 
mother about her business. Feeling himself here 
dependent on no one, and not being in very opulent 
circumstances, he began to work, and the next four 
years were the most productive of his whole life. 
They produced The New Helotse, the Social Contract, 
and iJmile. The first, which had been begun at the 

1 He maintained ever afterwards that she was the only real love 
of his life, that he had never completely loved even his "mamma," 
or his Therese at all ! Such is the power of a fixed idea ! 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 63 

Hermitage, under the iufluence of his passion for 
Madame d'Houdetot, was finished in 1759, and pub- 
lished two years later. The Social Contract, meant to 
be part of a larger work, Political Institutions, came 
out in 1762, only a few weeks before Emile. 

At Montmorency, Kousseau made the acquaintance 
of the Duke of Luxembourg, Marshal of France, and 
his wife, who introduced him into their very aristo- 
cratic circle, made him acquainted with great people, 
and in every way treated him with the utmost kind- 
ness and consideration, so that in their society he had 
a season of comparative rest and comfort. He read 
the whole of The New Heloise and JSmile to the duchess 
in bed, and in consequence became a great favorite 
with her. She even undertook to see to the printing 
and publication of £mile, and made the contracts. 
Thus Rousseau began to feel that, after his stormy 
past, there might be in store for him a peaceful old 
age, with a competency, honor, and friends. But this 
was not to be. 

No sooner had £mile appeared than it roused a 
storm, whose extent and fury it is, at first sight, diffi- 
cult to understand. Within a month, the Parliament 
condemned the book, ordering it to be burnt and its 
obnoxious author arrested. To this result there is no 
doubt that persons who had once been his friends con- 
tributed. The truth is, Rousseau, by his book, had 
placed himself in opposition to two powerful and 
well-defined parties : (1) the orthodox, religious party, 
which included the court, (2) the philosophic or 
rationalistic party, at whose head stood Voltaire and 
the Encyclopaedists — Diderot, D'Alembert, Grimm, 



64 ROUSSEAU 

etc. The latter was the prime mover in the storm. 
Voltaire and his followers had for many years been 
laboring, with might and main, to discredit and 
destroy all religion, all belief in the supernatural, 
and were flattering themselves that they would suc- 
ceed in replacing it by what they called Reason. Now 
came Rousseau, whom they had in vain tried to add 
to their ranks, and not only reinstated religion and 
religious belief, but did so with a power and a bril- 
liancy of literary style that threatened not only to 
defeat their purpose, but even to cast themselves and 
their works into the shade. This, of course, was not 
to be tamely borne. Voltaire especially, who hated 
Rousseau, and whose vanity shrank from no meanness, 
trickery, or deceit, moved heaven and earth to crush 
him; and he did this so adroitly that his victim was 
never able to trace to its source the persecution which 
remorselessly dogged him.^ But if the party of Vol- 
taire started the persecution, the orthodox party was 
but too ready to carry it on. The theology and 
religion expounded and advocated in iJmile, especially 
in the Savoyard Vicar's Confession of Faith, not only 
set at open defiance all the dogmas of the Church, but 
were well calculated, by their simplicity and sweet 
sentimentality, to become widely popular, and under- 
mine the Church's influence. Under these circum- 
stances, we need not be surprised to find that the two 
mutually hostile parties combined to procure the con- 
demnation of Rousseau and his book. 

We have seen that the Duchess of Luxembourg had 

1 The infamous libel, which Rousseau so unjustly attributed to the 
Swiss pastor Vernes, was from the hand of Voltaire. 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 65 

made the arrangements for the printing of ^mile. It 
was through her he learnt that his arrest was about 
to be decreed. She had received a letter to that effect 
from the Prince de Conti, a friend of Rousseau's, and 
so great was her agitation, not only on account of the 
latter, but also on her own, that she roused him from 
sleep and called hira to her bedside at two o'clock in 
the morning of June 9, 1762. It was intimated that, 
if he attempted to escape, no effort would be made to 
detain him. He accordingly determined upon this 
course, one chief motive being his unwillingness to 
compromise the duchess and her family. Several 
places of refuge were suggested to him ; but he finally 
chose the nearest, Switzerland, and made all possible 
haste to reach it. On the way, he composed three 
cantos of a poem — The Levite of Ephraim. On 
reaching Yverdun, he stopped for a few days with a 
friend, considering what he should do next, where 
he should settle. He would gladly have gone to 
Geneva, but found it closed against him. There, too, 
his book had been burnt and a decree issued against 
him. " These two decrees," he says, " were the signal 
for a shriek of malediction against me from one end 
of Europe to the other — a shriek of unexampled fury. 
All the papers, journals, pamphlets, tolled the most 
awful tocsin." Despairing of finding a refuge in 
Switzerland, he turned to the canton of Neuchatel, 
which at that time formed part of the dominions of 
Frederick the Great, and was governed by Marshal 
Keith, an exiled Scottish Jacobite of the noblest char- 
acter. Though he had inveighed against Frederick, 
Rousseau, with his usual frankness, wrote to him, 



66 ROUSSEAU 

telling him he was in his power and asking for an 
asylum. The Prussian king not only granted him 
this, but directed Marshal Keith to supply his needs, 
and even build him a house, if he so desired. Rous- 
seau declined his gifts, but thought better of him ever 
afterwards. Marshal Keith proved to be the best 
friend he ever had. Kousseau settled at Motiers, at 
the foot of Mount Jura, and remained there for over 
three years, having sent for Therese, his books and 
papers. Though he frittered away his time in child- 
ish pursuits, writing almost nothing, things went well 
enough till the departure of Marshal Keith, when the 
people of the village, stirred up by narrow-minded 
pastors, and prejudiced by the Armenian costume 
which, on account of a troublesome malady, he had 
adopted, began to threaten him with violence. This 
finally went so far that he was obliged to leave the 
place and betake himself to the Island of Saint Peter, 
in the Lake of Bienne, in the territory of Berne. 
Here he had reason to think that he would be unmo- 
lested, and, sending for Therese, gave himself up to 
a life similar to that which he had for some time led 
at the Charmettes, and later at the Hermitage. He 
revelled in nature, botanized and sentimentalized from 
morning till night, and was in an ecstasy of bliss. 
His description of his life here is one of the most 
charming Arcadian idyls in existence. At the end of 
six weeks, however, his persecutors found him out, 
and he received a peremptory order to leave the island, 
and the territory of Berne, within twenty-four hours, 
on pain of arrest and forcible expulsion. Stupefied 
and almost heartbroken, he begged the authorities to 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 67 

imprison him in the island for the rest of his life; he 
would then be safe, and he desired nothing better. 
But all in vain! He left the island in the end of 
October, 1765, not knowing whither to turn his 
steps. He thought of Corsica, of Berlin, where he 
would have had the protection of Marshal Keith, of 
England, which had been strongly recommended to 
him by certain of his patronesses, and where he hoped 
to enjoy the friendship of David Hume. He finally 
decided for the last of the three. ^ 

The life of Rousseau from this point on, having no 
effect upon his chief works, may be sketched rapidly. 
We shall try to show merely how his undisciplined 
temperament, and the theories he based on it, led to 
their natural results. Some of these had already 
manifested themselves — a diseased, sensuous imagi- 
nation, suspicion, Avillessness, querulousness, gloom. 
But others followed. 

On his way to England, Rousseau went to Paris, to 
join Hume. Here, instead of being molested, he was 
lionized. " Voltaire and everybody are quite eclipsed 
by him," said Hume. In spite of this, Rousseau, 
who sincerely disliked publicity, was eager to proceed, 
and, early in January, 1766, he crossed over to Eng- 
land with his new friend. In London he received the 
utmost attention, was visited by the most distin- 
guished persons, and was offered a pension by the 
king. About all this, however, he cared little, and 
was anxious only to find a quiet retreat. Several 

1 Rousseau's Confessions break off at this point. The projected 
third volume was never written. For what follows we have to 
depend on his Reveries, correspondence, etc. 



68 ROUSSEAU 

places were thought of; but he finally settled upon 
Wootton in Derbyshire. Here he was offered the use 
of a spacious house by a wealthy and generous Mr. 
Davenport, but insisted upon paying rent for it. 
Removing to it in March, and being soon joined by 
Therese, he resumed his life with Nature and his 
botany, set to work upon his Confessions, which he 
had long projected, and thought he was going to be 
happy. Soon, however, the rudeness of the climate, 
his ignorance of English, the difficulties caused by 
Therese, the change of feeling on the part of the Eng- 
lish public, as evidenced by the press, and Hume's 
lack of continual satisfactory responsiveness to his 
ardent feelings, brought to the surface the morbid sus- 
picion that lurked in his nature. He accused Hume 
of gross treachery, and of having conspired with Vol- 
taire and D'Alembert to ruin him.^ 

Hume, it is needless to say, was guiltless of 
treachery; but his cold, passionless nature rendered 
him incapable of understanding the man he had 
undertaken to befriend, and with whose known in- 
firmities he ought to have borne, while his vanity 
resented anything that seemed to call his Pharisaic 
impeccability in question. He accordingly printed a 

1 Among the charges which he brought against Hume was that 
of having written a letter pretending to come from Frederick tlie 
Great, which brought great ridicule upon him. The closing words 
of this letter, whose real author was the coxcomb, Horace Walpole, 
may be quoted, as containing some truth: " If you will persist in 
harrowing your soul to find new misfortunes, choose those which 
you prefer : I am a king and can procure you any sort you like ; 
and I will do what you need not expect from your enemies, I will 
cease to persecute you when you cease taking pride in being perse- 
cuted." 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 69 

defence of himself, thus dragging before the public 
what was essentially a private matter. The public 
took it up, and the world was deluged with pamphlets 
on both sides. Rousseau, who cared nothing for 
public opinion, preserved a dignified silence. Never- 
theless, he became more and more unhappy, and, after 
sojourning a year at Wootton, he suddenly disap- 
peared from it, leaving behind him Therese and his 
effects. He was found, first in Lincolnshire, and 
afterwards at Dover, whence, toward the end of May, 
1767, he crossed over to Calais, a wretched man, full 
of fears, disordered in body and in mind. 

For the next three years he wandered about from 
place to place, sometimes alone, sometimes the guest 
of generous patrons, among whom were the Marquis 
de Mirabeau and the Prince de Conti. In the chateau 
of the latter at Trye, near Gisors, he remained a 
whole year, under the assumed name of Eenou, and 
here he wrote the second part of his Qmfessions. 
Having got into difficulties through Therese, whose 
character became daily more brutal, he suddenly left 
Tvje, meaning to go to Chambery and visit old scenes.^ 
But he never reached that place. He passed some time 
at Grenoble, went thence to Bourgoin, where he spent 
over half a year, and informally married Therese, 
thinking thereby to regain her lost affection, and 
thence to Monquin, where he passed some fifteen 
months. Tired at last of wandering, and feeling that 
he might with safety return to Paris, he repaired 

1 His " mamma " was no longer living. She had died in destitu- 
tion and wretchedness, in 1762, while he was at Metiers, botanizing 
and trifling. 



70 ROUSSEAU 

thither in July, 1770, and settled down to his old 
life, which he had abandoned fourteen years before, 
when he went to occupy the Hermitage. Here he 
passed eight years, living in a very simple way on a 
meagre income, which he eked out by copying music. 
He still continued, however, to botanize, to write, 
and to compose music. His Dialogues, his Reveries, 
and some minor works belong to this period. He was 
still visited by the great, the fashionable, the wise, 
and the curious. But he was not happy. Therese 
was daily becoming more trying; he suffered a good 
deal of bodily pain; his mind was morbid, haunted 
by phantoms from the past, fears for the present, and 
gloomy forebodings for the future ; he had lost many 
of his friends, and his independence, which had almost 
become a disease, forbade him to accept aid from 
those whom he still retained. At last, however, by 
the advice of his physician, he was induced to accept 
the invitation of M. Girardin to go and live at his 
estate of Ermenonville, some twenty miles from Paris. 
He went there on the 21st of May, 1778, and Avas soon 
followed by Therese. Country life seemed to bring 
back some of his old enthusiasm, and he was revolving 
in his head projects for the future, among them the 
continuation of Emile, when, on the 2d of July, he 
was suddenly taken ill, suffering acute pains. On 
the following day he got up, and was preparing to go 
out, when he was seized with violent shivering and 
headache. While trying to swallow some medicine, 
he fell forward on the ground, and almost instantly 
expired, at the age of sixty-six years. He was buried 
the same day in the Island of the Poplars, in the Lake 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 71 

of Ermenonville, and there his ashes rested till the 
triumph of the Revolution, which he had done so 
much to bring about.-' On the 11th of October, 1793, 
they were removed, amid a tumult of enthusiasm, to 
Paris, and placed in the Pantheon, over whose portal 
are inscribed the words : Aux grands Hommes, la 
Patrie reconnaissante. 

This sketch of Rousseau's life, imperfect as it is, 
will enable us to form a conception and an estimate of 
his character and ideals, which underlie his social and 
educational theories. 

We shall not greatly err, if we say that the founda- 
tion of Rousseau's character was spontaneity, that his 
whole life was an endeavor to give free and uncon- 
strained expression to this, and that his works were 
so many efforts to champion it, as the ideal of life, 
and to show how it might be preserved, free from 
constraint and corruption. In Rousseau himself, this 
spontaneity, naturally very rich and strong, was fos- 
tered by an education which, leaving him at liberty to 
follow his momentary caprices, fired his imagination 
and made it ungovernable, so that he early became 
utterly incapable of submitting to any restraint, 
regulation, continuous occupation, or duty, however 
sacred. He lived in, and for, the present moment, 
seeking to draw from it the greatest amount of enjoy- 
ment, tranquil or ecstatic, as his mood happened to 
demand, without any thought of past, future, or the 
claims of others. He was too immediate to cherish 

1 The report that he committed suicide seems utterly destitute of 
foundation. [Since this was written, an examination of his skull has 
placed this heyoud doubt.] 



72 ROUSSEAU 

either love or hatred for absent things or persons. 
He was without malignity, because malignity causes 
discomfort; he loved for the pleasure love gave him, 
and when that ceased, love ceased. He was equally 
a stranger to revenge and gratitude. He could aban- 
don his best friend, and then weep torrents of delicious 
tears over his or her forlorn condition. He could 
gush over his friends as long as they were willing 
merely to gush back ; but, when they showed any signs 
of coldness, or tried to call him back to a sense of 
duty, he was ready to accuse them of the grossest 
ingratitude or blackest treachery. Knowing abso- 
lutely nothing of moral discipline, and having learnt 
none of those moral principles which render perma- 
nent and healthy social relations possible, he easily 
got disgusted with society, and was always ready to 
withdraw to solitude, which he could people with 
beings endowed with prodigal emotion, duly respon- 
sive to his own. For the same reason, while he exulted 
in virtue, when virtue was picturesque and pleasant, 
he was ready to give way to the basest of vices, if he 
could thereby obtain pleasure or avoid pain. He 
could never prevail upon himself to do anything that 
was disagreeable, no matter what law of duty im- 
posed it upon him. He could wax eloquent on the 
duties of parents, and melt into tears at the sight of 
innocent children; yet he sent his own offspring to 
the foundling asylum. Such are some of the fruits 
of spontaneity. 

But perhaps the most astonishing thing about Eous- 
seau is, that he went through life, not only without 
learning the meaning of duty, but firmly believing 



ROUSSEAU'S LIFE 73 

that the life of pure spontaneity and caprice which he 
led was the ideal life, and that he himself was the 
best of men. This, indeed, he openly maintains. So 
far, indeed, was he from being ashamed of his undis- 
ciplined spontaneity, that he wrote his Confessions to 
prove that the spontaneous man is the best of men. 
We need not be surprised, then, to find that all his 
works are so many pleas for spontaneity, so many 
attempts to show all the evils which afflict humanity 
to be due to restraints placed upon spontaneity or at- 
tempts to discipline it; that they are so many schemes 
for making humanity blest, by the removal of these 
restraints. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to 
say that the whole aim of Rousseau's literary activity 
is to show how men may be made happy and con- 
tented, without being obliged to become moral. 

But what Rousseau sought to prove by eloquent 
words, by insidious appeals to man's natural craving 
for happiness on easy terms, he disproved by his own 
character, his actions, and the sad results of both. 
His character, with its obtrusive independence, due 
to absence of all acknowledgment of moral ties, is 
spongy, unmanly, and repellent. We might pity him, 
if he did not pity himself so much; biit we can in no 
case admire or love him. His actions are merely so 
many efforts to obtain self-satisfaction, and that, too, 
of a purely sensuous, not to say sensual, sort. Though 
often imprudent, he is never heroic; though senti- 
mentally or picturesquely kind, he is never generous 
or high-minded. If he submits to wrong, he does so 
more from sloth than from magnanimity. The results 
of his character and actions, of which his theories are 



74 ROUSSEAU 

but the generalized expression and defence, are a 
sufficient warning against such character, actions, and 
theories. These results were querulousness, misery, 
and insanity, unillumined by one ray of conscious 
heroism or moral worth. The man who had no other 
interest in life than the satisfaction of his own senses 
and emotions, found life meaningless, when satiety, 
abuse, and age had blunted these ; and when, despite 
all unnatural stimulation from a diseased imagination, 
they became sources of pain, instead of sources of 
pleasure, nothing was left for him but spontaneous 
reactions in the form of querulousness, self-pity, and 
insanity. A sadder old age than Rousseau's is not 
often recorded. 

As the above estimate of Rousseau's character may 
seem harsh and unsympathetic, it ought to be added 
that it is based entirely upon his own account of him- 
self. In order to show this, it may be well to tran- 
scribe here a few passages from the four letters which 
he wrote to M. de Malesherbes, in January, 1762, in his 
best days, shortly before the publication of the Social 
Contract and Emile: — • 

" My heart cares too much for other attachments, to care so 
much for public opinion. I am too fond of my pleasure and my 
independence, to be as much the slave of vanity as they sup- 
pose. A man for whom fortune and the hope of a brilliant 
future never outweighed a rendezvous or a pleasant supper, is 
not likely to sacrifice his honor to the desire of being talked 
about." ... "I was long mistaken as to the cause of my in- 
vincible disgust with human society." ... " Wliat, then, is this 
cause ? It is simply this indomitable spirit of liberty, which 
nothing has been able to overcome, and before which fortune, 
honors, reputation even, are as nothing. Certain it is that this 
spirit of liberty is due less to pride than to indolence ; but this 



EOUSSEAU'S LIFE 75 

indolence is incredible. Everything scares it ; the smallest 
duties of civil life are insupportable to it ; a word to speak, a 
letter to vsrite, a visit to pay, as soon as they have to be done, 
are tortures to me. This is why, while ordinary intercourse 
with men is odious to me, friendship is so dear — because there 
is no duty about it. You follow your heart, and all is done. 
This also is why I have always dreaded kindnesses ; for every 
kindness demands gratitude, and I feel my heart ungrateful, 
simply because gratitude is a duty. In a word, the kind of 
happiness I want consists, not so much in doing what I wish, 
as in not doing what I don't wish. Active life has no tempta- 
tions for me. I had a thousand times rather do nothing than 
do anything against my will. I have a hundred times thought 
that I should not have been unhappy in the Bastille, having 
merely to stay there." . . . "An indolent soul, recoiling 
from all responsibilities, and an ardent, bilious temperament, 
easily affected and excessively sensitive to all that affects it, are 
two things which seem unlikely to meet in the same character ; 
yet, contrary though they be, they form the basis of mine." 
... " My soul, alienated from itself, belongs wholly to my 
body ; the disordered condition of my poor machine holds 
it every day more captive, until the time when the two 
shall part company altogether." . . . "My woes are the work 
of Nature ; my happiness is my own work. Say what you 
will, I have been well-behaved, because I have been as happy 
as my nature allowed me to be. I have not looked for my 
happiness in the far distance, but in myself ; and there I have 
found it." . . . "When my sufferings make me sadly meas- 
ure the length of the nights, what period of my life do you 
suppose I recall most frequently and with most pleasure, in my 
dreams?" ... " It is the period of my retreat, my solitary 
walks, the swift but dehcious days I have passed all by my- 
self, with my good, simple housekeeper, my beloved dog, my 
old cat, the birds of the field and the deer of the forest, the 
whole of nature and its inconceivable author. When, rising 
with the sun, in order to see him rise ... I saw the approach 
of a fine day, my first wLsh was that neither letters nor visits 
would come to spoil its charm. After giving up the forenoon 
to different chores, all of which I did with pleasure, because I 



76 ROUSSEAU 

might have put them off till another time, I hastened to dine, in 
order to escape intruders, and secure a longer afternoon. By 
one o'clock, even in the hottest days, I set out." ..." When 
once I had turned a certain corner, with what palpitation of 
heart, with what flashes of joy, I began to breathe, feeling my- 
self safe, and saying : ' Here I am, my own master for the rest 
of the day ! ' Then I went along more quietly to find some 
wilderness, where nothing showing the hand of man bore wit^ 
ness to servitude or mastership, some retreat into which I could 
suppose I had been the first to penetrate, and where no third 
intruder could come between Nature and me. It was there that 
she seemed to display an ever new splendor before me." . . . 
"My imagination did not long leave unpeopled the land thus 
adorned. I soon peopled it with beings according to my own 
heart, and, driving far away opinion, prejudice, and all facti- 
tious passions, I brought into the retreats of Nature men worthy 
to inhabit them. I formed them into a delightful society, of 
which I did not feel myself unworthy to be a member ; I made 
a Golden Age, to please myself ; and, filling these beautiful days 
with all those scenes in my life which had left behind pleasant 
recollections, and with all those which my heart could still desire, 
I melted into tears over the true pleasures of humanity, pleas- 
ures which are so delicious and so pure, and henceforth so far 
from men ! Oh, if in these moments my dreams were broken 
by any idea of Paris, of my time, of my little literary aureole, 
with what disdain did I at once send it flying, in order to give 
myself up, without distraction, to the exquisite feelings which 
filled my soul ! Nevertheless, in the midst of all this, I confess, 
the unreality of my chimeras sometimes suddenly saddened me. 
If my dreams had all turned into realities, they would not have 
satisfied me. I should still have imagined, dreamed, desired. 
I found in myself an inexplicable void, which nothing could fill, 
a certain rising of the heart toward another sort of enjoyment, 
of which I had no idea, but yet of which I felt the need." . . . 
' ' I will not hide from you that, notwithstanding my conscious- 
ness of my vices, I hold myself in high esteem." 

Such was the man who undertook to be the educator 
of his kind! 



CHAPTER IV 

ROUSSEAU'S SOCIAL THEORIES 

The State is prior to the individual. 

Aristotle, Politics. 

All men are equally by nature free. 

HoBBES, Leviathan, Cap. XXI. 

All public regimen, of what kind soever, seemeth evidently 
to have risen from the deliberate advice, consultation, and com- 
position between men, judging it convenient and behoveful, 
there being no impossibility in Nature, considered by itself, but 
that man might have lived without any public regimen. 

Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, Bk. I., § 10. 

Love thou thy land, with love far-brought 
From out the storied Past, and used 
Within the Present, but transfused 
Through future time by power of thought. 

But pamper not a hasty time, 
Nor feed with crude imaginings 
The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings 
That every sophister can lime. 

Tennyson. 

Rousseau, in his second letter to M. de Males- 
lierbes, tells us that his discourse on the Sciences and 
Arts, that on the Origin of Inequality among Men, 
and Emile, are "three inseparable works, which 
together form a single whole." He ought to have 
added, as a fourth, the Social Contract; but it was 
not then published, though written, and he had his 

77 



78 ROUSSEAU 

reasons for not speaking of it. Since it is thus im- 
possible to /understand his educational theory, as laid 
down in Emile, without having first grasped his social 
and political doctrines, as expounded in the other 
three, we must now consider these works. 

We have already, in Chapter I., briefly traced the 
course of the reaction against the theocentric, authori- 
tative teachings and institutions of the Middle Age, 
in favor of that anthropocentric, autonomous indi- 
vidualism which is the distinguishing characteristic 
of recent times, and have seen how the source of 
political authority was gradually transferred from 
the inscrutable will of God, supernaturally revealed, 
and embodied in kings and princes, to the manifold 
minds and wills of men. We have further seen that, 
when the question came to be asked : How did these 
minds and wills, being manifold and discordant, pro- 
duce an authority which they are all bound to acknow- 
ledge? the answer was, Through a Social Contract, by 
which men voluntarily agreed to defend the rights 
which had previously belonged to them in the state 
of Nature. Finally, we have seen that, while at first 
this contract was believed to be irrevocable, and the 
sovereign, once chosen, to be, through succession, 
perpetual and absolute, this belief gradually gave 
place to another, according to which the contract with 
the sovereign ^ might at any time be annulled or altered 

1 We must always distinguish between the Social Contract proper, 
which is an agreement among men to submit to a sovereign (com- 
posed of one person or many) , from the contract with the sovereign 
elected. The latter is the institution of government; the former is 
the creation of a state or commonwealth. Rousseau, unlike Locke, 
is clear enough on this point. 



ROUSSEAU'S SOCIAL THEORIES 79 

by the will of tlie people, and the sovereign deposed. 
Thus the conviction gradually grew up that men, in- 
stead of being the creatures and slaves of institutions, 
are their creators and masters ; that institutions exist 
for men, and not men for institutions, which should, 
accordingly, be modified to suit them. Thus, man 
and his desires became the ultimate end to which 
institutions, like all other things, are but means. It 
required but one unguarded step to pass from this to 
the notion that institutions are mere arrangements 
for enabling each individual man to give free play to 
his natural impulses — his animal spontaneity — with- 
out fear of being interrupted or disturbed.^ Rousseau 
took this step, and upon the notion so reached built 
up his political, social, and educational theories. 
They are all attempts to answer the question : How 
is it possible, through social institutions, which, under 
certain circumstances, become a painful necessity, for 
man's natural spontaneity, wherein consists his hap- 
piness, to find unthwarted expression? This, indeed, 
is the question which Rousseau supposed he was 
answering; but, as a matter of fact, he went a step 
further, and asked, instead : How would social insti- 
tutions have to be arranged in order that my spon- 
taneity might have free expression? Now, as we 
have seen (Chapters II., III.), Rousseau's spontaneity 
was both excessive and peculiar. He was almost the 
last man to be adopted as the type of men in general, 
and this he knew very well.'^ He belonged, indeed, 

1 This was exactly the Sophists' position, which Socrates trium- 
phantly refuted. See my Aristotle, pp. 100 sqq. 

2 See the ojjeuing sentences of the Confessions. 



80 ROUSSEAU 

to the very numerous class of self-centred, unenter- 
prising dalliers; but he was an extreme and, there- 
fore, a rare specimen of it. Being, according to his 
own admission, at once ardently sensuous and hope- 
lessly indolent, he craved those kinds of half-animal 
enjoyment that could be attained Avith the small- 
est amount of reflection, will, and physical energy. 
Hence, his ideal was a quiet, simple, easy-going life, 
with no duties and no aims, with plenty of time for 
dallying, dreaming, and love-making, and with the 
hope of a divinely provided future eternity of the 
same sort. He desired aboVe all things to feel, and 
to avoid the trouble of thinking or acting,^ With the 
story of Eden and the theories of Hobbes and Locke 
in his mind, he was fain to believe that this was man's 
natural condition; but, instead of holding with these 
that men had risen, by combining into societies through 
a rational contract, he maintained that they had fallen, 
and that thought and knowledge were evidences of 
depravity. To prove this, and to recommend a return 
to Nature and savagery, was the aim of his two dis- 
courses; while, in the Social Contract, he tried to 
rescue as much of " Nature " as he could, in the midst 
of Culture. Still deep in mediaeval notions, he had no 
conception of evolution through struggle, or of the 
only blessedness worthy of man, — the consciousness 
of continual moral victory in such struggle. 

1 He never did either except under the influence of passion. 
Hume said of him, "He has or\\j felt during the whole course of 
his life, and in this respect his sensibility rises to a pitch, beyond 
what I have seen any example of; but it still gives him a more 
acute feeling of pain than of pleasure." Quoted in Morley's 
Rousseau, Vol. H., p. 299. 



ROUSSEAU'S SOCIAL THEORIES 81 

Bearing these facts in mind, we have no difficulty 
in realizing the perturbation caused in Rousseau's 
unstable nature by the Dijon Academy's question, 
which called forth his first discourse. He believed, 
with all his heart, ^ that not only art and science, but 
everything that presupposes discipline and continuous 
thought or labor, was prejudicial to morals, that is, 
to the sort of life he coveted; and he undertook to 
show this by an appeal to present experience and past 
history. Having, in his contact with men, learnt 
what all of us learn, — that the external polish of 
manners and the elegant? accomplishments which earn 
for a man the character of gentleman, and make him 
a social favorite, are not only compatible, but fre- 
quently coexist, with inner meanness, heartlessness, 
vulgarity, and treachery, whereas rusticity of manners 
and slowness of intellect often conceal an inner core 
of sterling gentlemanliness and worth, — he jumps to 
the conclusion that polish and culture, by furnishing 
a uniform style of mask for the virtuous and the 
vicious alike, make all human intercourse a mere 
masquerade, destroy simplicity, and so corrupt so- 
ciety. This conclusion he finds confirmed by a sur- 
vey of the ancient nations, which he affirms, with a 
fair show of truth, to have been virtuous, strong, and 
progressive as long as they were ignorant of the sci- 
ences and arts, and to have declined from the moment 
when these were introduced. Though admitting that 
great thinkers and artists may be useful, if they are 

1 One thing about Rousseau can never be doubted, — and it is 
a great thing, and due to his spontaneity, — his complete emotional 
sincerity. His desires were very real to him. 
o 



82 KOUSSEAU 

also great and virtuous citizens, like Cicero and Bacon, 
he has only scorn for the ordinary run of pliilosophers, 
scientists, and literary panderers to popular taste, 
bewailing, as an almost unmixed evil, the invention 
of printing, which makes it possible to perpetuate their 
productions. Expressed briefly, his argument is, that 
scientific and artistic culture is incompatible with vir- 
tue. He concludes that such culture should be eschewed, 
and men return to the simplicity of primitive life and 
blissful ignorance, unprovocative of ambition. 

Paradoxical and untenable as Rousseau's general 
position is, it contains a large amount of truth, which 
won it adherents in an age of universal unreality, 
hypocrisy, and corruption, masked by politeness. It 
is true that polish without virtue, gentlemanly bearing 
without generosity and sympathy, erudition without 
insight, brilliancy without earnestness, and charity 
without self-sacrifice, are evil and not good. It is 
true that mere occupation with science for science' 
sake, without any sense of its relation to moral life, 
and with art for the sake of the passive pleasure it 
yields, is a sure sign of moral decadence and national 
enfeeblement. It is true that that culture alone is good 
which leads to lofty simplicity and robust virtue. It 
was no small merit on the part of Eousseau to have 
given these truths energetic expression; but, when he 
confounded true culture of mind, affection, and will 
with mere superficial polish, and refined simplicity 
with ignorant savagery or rusticity, he was misleading 
the world and defeating his own ends, by a display 
of that hollow and pernicious rhetoric which he so 
heartily despised and stigmatized. 



ROUSSEAU'S SOCIAL THEORIES 83 

Eousseau's first discourse was attacked from many 
quarters; but this by no means daunted him. His 
passions being concerned, he not only replied to all 
objectors, but returned to the charge with fresh am- 
munition in his second discourse, in which he sought 
to answer the question: What is the Origin of Ine- 
quality among Men, and is it authorized by the Natural 
Laiv? In this, true to his love of feeling and his 
hatred of thinking, and mindful of his lonely, sensu- 
ous reveries in the forest of Montmorency, he assures 
us that " the state of reflection is a state contrary to 
Nature, and the man who thinks is a depraved ani- 
mal." He draws a picture of man in his purely animal 
state, when he " wandered in the forests, without in- 
dustry, without speech, without home, without war or 
tie, with no need of his fellows and no desire to hurt 
them, perhaps even not knowing any one of them in- 
dividually." Being endowed with the sentiment of 
pity, he was naturally kind and good, inclined rather 
to help than to hurt his fellows when they came in 
his way; and, as there was as yet no inequality, he 
had no ground for hatred, envy, pride, or any of the 
numerous vices that follow in their train. Following 
Nature, he was free, strong, and happy. 

Rousseau next proceeds to show how, as men, mul- 
tiplying, found more and more difficulty in obtaining 
food, they invented traps and similar devices, and so 
began to have private property, and how, finally, 
learning that they could accomplish their ends better 
by combining, they entered first into momentary, and 
then into permanent, relations with each other. With 
the rise of the latter, they began to settle together, to 



84 ROUSSEAU 

build themselves huts, and to have their families 
about them. Division of labor began, and with it a 
certain loss of robust, savage courage. Civilization 
was beginning, and with it corruption. Still, as 
there was yet no marked inequality, there was almost 
no vice, and, indeed, this was perhaps the happiest 
of all human conditions. The great evil of inequality 
began when what had previously been common to all, 
was claimed as private property. "The first man 
who, having enclosed a piece of land, took upon him 
to say, 'This is mine,' and found people simple 
enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil 
society. How many crimes, wars, murders, miseries, 
horrors, would have been spared the human race by 
him who, tearing up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, 
should have called out to his fellows: 'Beware of 
listening to this impostor ! You are lost, if you for- 
get that the fruit belongs to all, the earth to none ! ' " 
From this point on, it is easy to follow the develop- 
ment of civil society, involving, as it does, the decay 
of freedom, virtue, and happiness, and the growth of 
slavery, vice, and misery. " If we follow the progress 
of inequality," he says, "... we shall find that the es- 
tablishment of law and of the right of private property 
was its first term; the institution of magistracy, its 
second; and the third and last, the transition from 
legitimate to arbitrary power; so that the condition 
of rich and poor was authorized by the first epoch; 
that of strong and weak, by the second; and by the 
third, that of master and slave, which is the last 
degree of inequality, and the one to which all the 
others finally come." And Rousseau draws a picture 



ROUSSEAU'S SOCIAL THEORIES 85 

of civilized society, which contrasts luridly enough 
Avith his previous picture of the life of the "noble 
savage." The conclusion is, that all inequality among 
men is due to private property, and all vice, misery, 
and slavery to inequality. The moral, of course, is, 
Return to savage life — to the state of Nature. 

No better commentary can be made on this book 
than the one Avhich Voltaire made, in the letter in 
which he thanked the author for a copy of it. "I 
have received," he says, "your new book against the 
human race, and return you my thanks. Never was 
such ability put forth in the endeavor to make us all 
stupid. On reading your book, one longs to walk on 
all fours." The work, regarded as a whole, is indeed 
the height of absurdity ; and yet it contains a large 
amount of solid truth, and produced, in the practical 
world, effects which determined, and are still deter- 
mining, the fate of nations. What the author says 
in regard to the origin of language and of ideas is 
better than anything that had been said before him. 
His views on the relations of property to social life 
and ethics are more and more coming to be recognized 
as true. His notions of the relation of thought to 
reality, if they had been worked out into a system, 
would have given us a saner and truer philosophy 
than any that has ever appeared.^ And the book 

1 Take, for example, the following: " The human understanding 
owes much to the passions, which, by common consent, likewise 
owe much to it. It is through their activity that our reason per- 
fects itself ; we seek to know only because we desire to enjoy ; and 
it is impossible to conceive how a being having neither desires nor 
fears should take the trouble to reason. The passions, on the other 
hand, originate in our needs, and their progress in our knowledge." 



86 ROUSSEAU 

contains not only the tinder that kindled the French 
Revolution, and the germ that burst into the Ameri- 
can Declaration of Independence, but also the forces of 
all those deeper and more pervasive movements that 
are "toiling in the gloom," under the surface of our 
present social order, — socialism, anarchism, nihilism, 
and the like. Lastly, there is in the book an impor- 
tant pedagogical truth, which may be summed up in 
the Greek aphorism: Education is learning to love 
and hate correctly. 

The second discourse was written in 1753; nine 
years later appeared the Social Contract, meant to be 
merely a portion of a larger work on Political Institu- 
tions. Rousseau having, meanwhile, come to recog- 
nize that a return to the state of Nature is impossible, 
that civil society and culture have come to stay, now 
proposed to himself this problem: To find a form of 
association lohich shall defend, with all the common force, 
the person and property of each associate, and through 
tvhich each, tcniting zvith all, shall, nevertheless, obey 
only himself, and remain as free as before. In other 
words, he wished to discover how the freedom lost 

Had these thoughts beeu heeded, Kant would have been saved from 
his dualism between the matter and form of thought ; and the world 
would have been spared the whole laborious and futile attempt of 
idealism to build up a i"eal world out of the forms or categories of 
thought. We shall never get a philosophy worthy of the name, 
until, with Rousseau, we see that all reality is feeling, and that 
thought is merely the articulation of feeling. Feeling, in the form 
of desire, is the ideal ; in the form of satisfaction, the actual. The 
history of the categories of thought is the history of all evolution ; 
not because the categories unfold themselves, but because desire, 
in its effort toward ever fuller and more varied satisfaction, dif- 
ferentiates itself into them. 



EOUSSEAU'S SOCIAL THEORIES 87 

with the state of Nature might be recovered in the 
state of Culture. His answer was, By means of a 
Social Contract of this form : " Each of us places in a 
common stock liis person and all his power, under the 
supreme direction of the general will, and we further 
receive each member as an individual part of the 
whole." In other words, men, coming to recognize 
that "they had reached a point where the obstacles 
to their preservation in a state of Nature were too 
much for the forces which each individual could put 
forth to maintain himself in that state," and that, 
therefore, they must perish if they tried to continue 
in it, resolved to unite their forces in order to over- 
come these obstacles. In this way, they gave up 
their individual freedom and accepted, in exchange, 
social freedom; that is, such freedom as is possible 
when each individual submits himself to rules reached 
through a compromise between the wills of all. 
Whereas, previously, each individual was a sovereign 
in his own right, now the only sovereign is the whole 
of society, of which each individual is a member. 
Or, to put it otherwise, men, to escape complete bond- 
age to Nature, accepted partial bondage to society, in 
which each will is free only in so far as it is a part of 
the general will, influencing all and being influenced 
by all. This will, in any particular case, is found in 
the vote of the majority. Of course, this social free- 
dom, according to Rousseau, is not an equivalent for 
natural freedom, which should be preserved wherever 
it is possible; but it is the next best thing. Only, 
care must be taken that it does not, as at present, 
degenerate into tyranny on the one hand and slavery 



88 ROUSSEAU 

on the other. ^ Though the authority of the sovereign 
is absolute, inalienable, indivisible, and the source of 
all laws, yet, since the execution of laws must be 
entrusted by law to a part of the sovereign, there is 
always danger that this part, tliough possessing no 
independent authority, will either use the laws for 
its own benefit or act contrary to the laws, and thus 
enslave the other part. When this happens, the 
Social Contract is broken, and the parties to it return 
to a state of Nature, free from all authority, but free, 
at the same time, to make a fresh contract. Here we 
have at once the conditions and the justification of 
revolution. 

Such, in very brief form, is the main gist of the 
Social Contract, which has played such a dissolvent 
part in the history of the last hundred years. It is, 
from our present point of view, easy to criticise it, 
but it is also easy to misunderstand its main thesis. 
It may be, and is, true that Rousseau conceives all 
social order to rest upon an original compact, made 
in the distant past ; but this is as good as irrelevant 
to his purpose. His book is meant to solve a prob- 
lem, not to reason from a fact. His contention is, 
that all the relations of the individual to society 
ought, at every moment, to be such as would result 
from a free contract entered into by persons all enjoy- 
ing the same natural rights, all free and all equal, on 
the understanding that all these rights should be 
maintained, and that all the contractants should re- 

1 " Man is born free, and is everywhere in chains." These 
are the opening words of the first chapter of the Social Con- 
tract. 



ROUSSEAU'S SOCIAL THEORIES 89 

main free and equal under the contract. Is this true? 
that is the question. It is not. 

Starting from false premises, Rousseau naturally 
arrived at false conclusions. His "state of Nature" 
is a pure fiction of the imagination. Man, in such a 
state, would not be man at all ; for all that makes him 
man is evolved through association. He is not born 
free ; for freedom and slavery are terms that have no 
meaning except in a social order. Animal caprice is 
not freedom. Man does not lose, but gain, freedom 
by association, and the more extensive the associa- 
tion the greater the freedom. The phrase "natural 
rights," which has played so mischievous a part in 
thought and practice since Rousseau's day, is actually 
self-contradictory, or, as logicians say, contains a 
contradictio in adjecto. Where there is no social 
order, there are no rights at all ; in so far, all beings 
are equal. Rights imply duties, and both imply 
mutuality, which involves association. Society is 
not due to an agreement whereby men pool rights 
previously and independently possessed; it is a com- 
bination whereby rights are created. If we insist 
upon giving a meaning to the phrase "natural rights," 
it must be those rights which a man, born into a 
society already constituted, may fairly claim, on the 
ground that certain duties are demanded of him, even 
though he has had no voice in the organization of 
that society. At the present day, when all men are 
held to be born into human society,^ and therefore to 
have certain duties, all are held to have such natural 

1 Aristotle was far wiser than Rousseau, when he said, " Man is 
hy nature a political animal." 



90 KOUSSEAU 

rights. But tins view is of very recent origin, even 
in the most civilized countries. 

Again, "general will" is a nonsensical phrase; for 
will is always individual, and, even if we substitute 
"aggregate of individual wills," this aggregate is not 
found by pairing off, and setting aside, opposing wills, 
and counting only those that can find none to pair off 
with. One Avill does not cancel another, however 
much it may be opposed to it. But Rousseau's chief 
error lay in this, that, like Plato, the first and great- 
est of Utopians, he supposed that human nature could 
be suddenly transformed by the fiat of the legislator, 
and society be made to assume any arrangement which 
he, with his geometrical wisdom or landscape-garden- 
ing fancy, might choose to give it. Neither of these 
men based his theories upon a careful study of human 
nature and progress, or inquired what, given humanity 
such as it is, with its ignorance, caprice, and wilful- 
ness, was possible for it at any given stage in its 
career. Both of them set out with their own feelings 
and preferences, and, finding that these were thwarted 
and confined by the sotual order about them, went to 
work, with their imaginations, to construct another, 
in which these feelings and preferences should have 
full play. This is the fatal vice of all Utopians and 
sentimentalists. They make the satisfaction of their 
own needs and imaginary desires the aim of social 
endeavor, forgetting the homely proverbs, that "you 
cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," and 
that "one man's meat is another man's poison." 
Moreover, since all sentimentalists belong to the 
dalliant class (see p. 24), they are always trying to 



KOUSSEAU'S SOCIAL THEORIES 91 

make arrangements for dalliance, that is, for the ces- 
sation of struggle and energetic enterprise, and for 
the realization of an earthly paradise of sweet rest 
and dreamy emotions. They cannot be made to see 
that all true life is struggle, and that, if the struggle 
should cease, life would cease to have any value, and 
become a mere opium-eater's dream. 

But it is the very vice of these subjective Utopians 
that wins fanatical adherents for their theories ; for 
the fanatic is simply the man who, by calling the 
imagined satisfaction of his own desires the sacred 
ideal of humanity, can proclaim it, without fear or 
shame, to the whole world, and, in words fledged with 
passion and tipped with sympathetic poison, call upon 
it to aid him in giving it reality, not hesitating, if 
the opportunity occurs, to employ, in the process, 
fire, sword, gibbet, or guillotine. If he is of the 
extreme sort, he will announce that he speaks with 
the voice of God, and command all men to believe 
in him and follow his lead, on pain of eternal tort- 
ure. Thus did Muhammad, Joseph Smith, and "the 
Bab " of modern Persia. 

As the virus of Rousseau's social theories, of which 
his educational system confessedly forms a part, has 
not yet ceased to poison the minds of men and women 
of the dalliant order, it may be well to bring out here 
the nature of this virus, and to show its pernicious 
effects in social life. 

A rapid glance at the world, as we know it, suffices 
to show us that it is composed of clusters of feelings, 
distinguished, grouped, and generalized into things, 
by what we call the categories of thought. Mat- 



92 ROUSSEAU 

ter,^ force, love, hate, self, are feelings, differentiated 
by time, space, relation, and the like. If, now, we 
follow the course of evolution, as revealed to us by 
recent investigation, we shall see that it is a progress 
in feeling from indistinction to distinction, from un- 
consciousness to consciousness, and, finally, to self- 
consciousness, which appears to be the ultimate 
distinctness. To this last, man alone, so far as we 
know, has attained, and even he has not attained to it 
completely. He is still "half-akin to brute,'"* still 
swayed by impulses which he is not able to differen- 
tiate, analyze, or make completely subservient to his 
ultimate end. His passions — even his love and pity 
— are, to a large extent, still blind, and he acts from 
motives whose rationality he often does not see. In 
like manner, his social relations are still half instinc- 
tive, being due, not to conscious contract, but to use 
and wont. He thus finds himself in a certain status, 
which, if one wishes to abuse language, may be called 
thraldom, or even slavery, but which, in fact, is 
merely the natural condition of all beings that have 
not, as the result of complete self -consciousness, at- 
tained perfect self-determination. It is a familiar 
saying that all social advance is from status to con- 
tract,^ which means from relations contracted through 
instinct, use, and wont, to relations entered into with 
a conscious purpose. Since this advance cannot reach 

1 If we abstract from matter what is plainly feeling, e.g. shape, 
color, hardness, impenetrability, there is nothing left. Matter is 
a group of feelings. See Huxley, Descartes' Discourse touching 
the Method of using one's Reason, pp. 373 sq. 

2 Tennyson, In Memoriam, epilogue. 

8 See Sir H. S. Maine, Ancient Laiv, pp. 165 sq. 



ROUSSEAU'S SOCIAL THEORIES 93 

its goal until men, grown completely self-conscious, 
can undertake to conduct their lives in view of an 
all-embracing, freely-set purpose, it is evident that 
a social contract in Rousseau's sense, a contract ex- 
tending to all the relations of life, can come only at 
the end, and by no means at the beginning, of social 
life. It is the failure to grasp this simple result of 
historic induction that makes it possible seriously to 
construct Utopias and, at the same time, makes their 
failure almost certain. An Utopia is simply a pro- 
posal to impose one man's notion of the conditions 
that would insure his happiness upon his fellows, an 
arrangement which, instead of securing their free- 
dom, would completely enthral them. Every Utopian, 
from Plato down, places himself in the ruling class. 
Imagine how Rousseau would feel as a member of the 
warrior class in Plato's Republic, or as an operative 
in Mr, Bellamy's industrial commonwealth! In all 
history, we know but of one man who succeeded in 
imposing his private ideal upon his race and, through 
it, upon a large portion of the world; and that was 
Muhammad ; but we must not forget that he did so by 
means of supernatural claims, and that the results have 
been fanaticism and slavery.^ 

1 Rousseau has some excellent remarks on the efforts of Peter 
the Great to force his ideal upon Russia. "The Russians," he 
says, "will never be truly civilized, because they were so too 
soon. Peter had an imitative genius: he had not true genius, 
such as creates and makes everything out of nothing. Some of 
the things he did were good ; the greater part were ill-timed. He 
saw that his people was barbarian ; he did not see that it was not 
ripe for civilization. He tried to civilize it, when he ought to have 
inured it to war. He wished at once to make Germans and Eng- 
lishmen, when he ought to have begun by making Russians. He 



94 KOUSSEAU 

No good can ever be done to a people by trying to 
force it into any mould prepared for it from without. 
Even if for a time it submits to the mould, it will, 
sooner or later, either burst it or perish through 
cramping. In a healthy state, peoples feel their way 
forward, so to speak, spontaneously, forming new 
ideals at every step, and freely realizing them at the 
next. All that the enthusiastic lover of his kind, the 
wise reformer, can do, is to hasten this process by 
diffusing such knowledge and culture as shall give a 
deeper and wider meaning to experience, and so make 
possible higher ideals. Any attempt to force the 
process, or to substitute for its slowly, but freely, at- 
tained results, a rigid, unprogressive scheme, such as 
Utopias are sure to be, can lead to nothing but slavery 
and death. Equally fatal to liberty and well-being 
are all attempts to induce a people to alter its whole 
social system in favor of some scheme that seems to 
promise greater material prosperity, greater ease, 
comfort, and dalliance. This is the mistake made by 
the socialists and many other well-meaning, but ill- 
advised, reformers of the present day. This was the 
mistake made by Rousseau, whose Social Contract 
may be said to be the bible of both socialism and 
anarchism.^ Holding that the bonds of civil society 
were, or might be, created by a contract, he concluded 
that they were dissolved when the terms of that con- 
tract were violated, and that thereupon the contract- 
prevented his subjects from becoming what they might have been, 
by persuading them that they were wliat they were not. . . . The 
Russian empire will try to subjugate Europe, and will itself be 
subjugated." / ■ 

1 See below, Cap. XI. 



EOUSSEAU'S SOCIAL THEORIES 95 

ants or their representatives could revert to their 
original condition of savage individualism, with free- 
dom to slay each other to their heart's content, and, 
when tired of that, to return — a battered remnant — ■ 
to civic life, by making a new contract to suit their 
tastes. The premise of this argument being false, 
the conclusion was necessarily so likewise; but this 
was not the worst. Eousseau forgot three most im- 
portant things: (1) to state the precise terms of the 
social contract; (2) to determine what would consti- 
tute a violation of these terms ; (3) to say who should 
have the right of declaring authoritatively when they 
were violated. On his principles it would be entirely 
competent for any body of men, at any time, to declare 
the contract broken, and to revert to anarchy. 

Thus the Social Contract is mistaken in theory, and 
pernicious, or impossible, in practice. It rests upon 
a false conception of human nature and its laws, and 
])laces, as a fact, at the beginning of social evolution, 
what can only be an ideal to be gradually approached 
as an end. It places the perfection of human nature 
in a condition of savage isolation, governed by pure 
caprice, and regards all advance toward moral liberty, 
through social organization, as a decline and a degen- 
eration. It makes liberty and equality conditions 
prior and external to civilization, instead of, as they 
are, the highest results of the social process. It 
teaches men to regard social restraints and institutions 
as something artificial and conventional, which it is 
their duty to cast aside, whenever they can, in favor 
of savage freedom, with its animal immediateness and 
spontaneity. If it reluctantly admits the necessity 



96 ROUSSEAU 

of a social order, it regards this, not as a means of 
moral training in conscious self-control, which is true 
freedom, but as a contrivance for conserving animal 
spontaneity and caprice. 

From Rousseau's views regarding the truly impor- 
tant in life and the value of social organization, we 
can easily divine the character of his educational 
system. With that we shall begin to deal in the next 
chapter. 



CHAPTER V 
ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 

Infancy 

{l^mile, Bk. I.) 

To live alone, one must be a god or a beast. 

Aristotle, Politics. 

An illustrious author says that it is only the bad man that is 
alone. I say it is only the good man that is alone. 

Rousseau, iSmile, Bk. II. 

The whole universe can be only a point for an oyster. 

Ibid. 

We have seen that Rousseau's social and political 
theories had their origin in two things : (1) a group of 
notions, of naturalistic and individualistic tendency, 
current in his day; (2) his own sensuous, indolent, 
dalliant nature, which continually craved a life of bo- 
vine satisfaction, unencumbered by thought, or sense 
of duty. Seizing upon the distinction between natural 
and civic life, and temperamentally hating the latter, 
he proceeded, in direct opposition to Hobbes and 
Locke, to decry it, as slavish and depraved, and to 
glorify the former, as alone free and healthy. In a 
word, he set up his own dreams )f dalliance as the 
ideal of human life. Such a cou -se will always be 
open and tempting to men of his i npatient, undisci- 
plined character, so long as we pe -sist in drawing a 
hard and fast distinction between he life of Nature 
H 97 



98 ROUSSEAU 

and the life of Culture, and, failing to see that they 
are simply two commergent stages in one process, 
attribute them to different principles. It is always 
perilous to introduce any sort of dualism into exist- 
ence, or to seek for the explanation of the lower forms 
of it elsewhere than in the laws manifested in the 
higher. If we cannot show that ethical life is natural, 
we can, at least, show that natural life is rudimen- 
tarily ethical. Thus viewed, the lower manifestation 
will hardly be preferred to the higher. Ko errors are 
so fatally mischievous as metaphysical errors. To 
one such error were due most of the horrors of the 
French Revolution. 

For a century preceding Eousseau's time, educa- 
tional theories had been rife in a world awakening 
from the lurid, Dantesque dreams of the Middle Age. 
The old belief, that man's nature is fallen and de- 
praved, had gradually been replaced by a belief that it 
is fundamentally sound and good; and, at the same 
time, education had come to be regarded, not as a 
cleans of eradicating vile human nature, and replacing 
it by a new divine nature, but as a means of develop- 
ing human nature itself. In England, Locke had 
written a plain, common-sense treatise on education ^ 
from the latter point of view, and from this Rousseau 
- drew his chief inspiration. About 1760 the Jesuits, 
who had done so much to promote education of the 
repressive and eradicative sort, were losing their 
hold,^ and thus an -pportunity was offered for educa- 
tional theories an I practices of the opposite kind. 

1 Some Thou 'hts coricernlng Education (1688) 

2 They were xpelled from France iu 1764. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 99 

Of this Rousseau, among others, took advantage, and, 
in 1762, produced £mile, which assumes that all edu- 
cation ought to be the development of Nature. 

Rousseau's educational system was meant to be a 
preparation for that sort of life which his own nature 
pictured to him as the highest — a quiet, uneventful, 
unreflective, half -animal, half-childish " natural " life, 
free from serious tasks, aims, or duties, — the life of 
a savage, conceived as sensitive and capricious, but 
kind and lazy.^ Had he been logical, he would have 
simply advised parents to send their children at birth, 
for nurture and education, to a tribe of savages or 
nomads, as the Meccans are said to have done in the 
time of Muhammad. But, logicality not being one of 
his virtues, he propounded this problem : How can a 
child, born in civil society, be so reared as to remain 
unaffected and uncorrupted by the vices inseparable 
from civilization? His solution is J^mile. In this 
work, education is conceived as a negative, protective 
process, warding off external evil, that the good native 
to the child ^ may be free to unfold itself, in all its 

1 Savage life, as conceived by Rousseau, is mainly the product 
of his own imagination. His ideal savage is simply himself. 

2 Wordsworth was under the sentimental glamor of Rousseau's 
influence, when he wrote, in his Ode to Imitiortality, the incautious, 
flattering lines : — 

" Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness ; 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home." 

And so was Lowell, when he wrote : — 

"All that hath been majestical 
In life or death, since time began, 

Is native in the simple heart of all, 
The angel heart of man." 

An Incident in a Railroad Car. 



100 EOUSSEAU 

spontaneity. It will be the proper time to consider 
the justice of this conception after we have examined 
the work in detail. 

Rousseau flaunts his colors from the outset. The 
opening words of the first book of ^'mile are : " Every- 
thing is well, as it comes from the hands of the 
Author of things; everything degenerates in the 
hands of man." Here a strong line is drawn between 
Nature, as the work of God, and Art, or Culture, as 
the work of man, and the latter, instead of being con- 
ceived, as Shakespeare and Hobbes conceived it, as 
the continuation and crown of the former, is regarded 
as something meanly opposing and thwarting it.^ 
Man distorts and disfigures everything, and, indeed, 
if he is to live in society, he must do so; for only 
distorted men can so live. " In the condition which 
things have now reached, a man left to himself, in 
the midst of others, at his birth, would be the most 
disfigured of all. Prejudices, authority, necessity, 
example, all the social institutions in which we find 
ourselves submerged, would stifle Nature in him, with- 
out putting anything in its place." To prevent this, 
"the springing shrub must be protected from the shock 
of human opinions," by education. "This education 
comes to us from Nature, or men, or things.* The 
internal development of our faculties and organs is 
due to Nature ; the use which we are taught to make 
of this development is the education by men ; and the 

1 See p. 9, and note, and compare the soliloquy of Edmund, in 
King Lear, Act I., sc. ii. Edmund is, indeed, the natural man, 
whose character Rousseau might have studied with advantage. 

2 Cf. my Aristotle, in this series, pp. 9 sqq. 



EOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 101 

acquisition of our own experience, through the objects 
which affect us, is the education by things." ^ A com- 
plete education is possible only when these three kinds 
of education are in harmony. "Now, . . . that by 
Nature does not depend upon us ; that by things de- 
pends only in certain respects; that by men is the 
only one of which we are really masters." It follows 
that, since the first two cannot be conformed to the 
third, the third must be conformed to them, if there 
is to be harmony. Men, in endeavoring to impart 
education, must conform to the methods of Nature and 
things, which exert resistance but never authority. 
Hence, all authority must be excluded from methods 
of education. Ignoring things, Rousseau maii.'/jins 
that all education must conform to Nature. But 
what is Nature? It is the sum of man's instinctive 
or spontaneous tendencies, before they are altered 
by opinion or reflection. Education, therefore, must 
conform to these tendencies, and would do so, if its 
only aim were to produce men out of all relations to 
other men. But what are we to do, when, instead of 
educating man for himself, we wish to educate him for 
others? Then harmony is impossible. "Compelled 
to oppose either Nature or social institutions, we must 
choose between the man and the citizen; for we cannot 
make both at the same time." . . . "The natural 
man is all for himself:- he is the numerical unit, the 
absolute integer, having no relations save to himself 

1 This is a false classification. Gur experience extends to Nature 
and man, as well as to things. 

2 See Dante, Hell, III., 22-69, where the lot of those who " werere 
for themselves " {per seforo) is foircibly depicted. jnt. 



102 ROUSSEAU 

and his equal. The civil man is but a fractional 
unit, depending on its denominator, and deriving its 
value from its relation to the integer, which is the 
body social. Good social institutions are those which 
best understand how to disnature man, to take away 
his absolute existence and give him in exchange a 
relative one, transferring his ego to the common 
unit; so that each individual thinks himself no 
longer a one, but a part of the unit, and is sensible 
only in the Avhole." 

Holding that education for manhood and education 
for citizenship are altogether incompatible, Rousseau 
insists, that we must frankly choose between the two, 
^^•otl^ r'vvise we shall make "one of the men of the pres- 
ent day, a rrenchman, an Englishman, a bourgeois — 
a nothing." "The choice," he adds, "is not difficult 
to make; for at tlie present day there is neither coun- 
try, nor citizen, nor public institution for educating 
citizens."^ There remains only family education, or 
the education by -Mature. Though aware that this 
will not qualify for civic functions, Rousseau, never- 
theless, proposes to :ido23t it, on the ground that it will 
restore the natural, vnsophisticated man, whose sole 
function is to be a n an, "and that whoever is well 
trained for that, canno '"- fail to perform those which are 
related to it. Whether my pupil be intended for the 

1 This is just as true of our time as it was of Rousseau's, and he 
is in part to blame for the fa ?t. We make the same unwise dis- 
tinction between Nature and Ct Iture, between man and citizen, that 
he did, as if Culture were not ' 'an art that Nature makes," and as 
if citizenship were not an essen "ial function of man, as man! We 
v.annot possibly educate a man, as man, without educating him as 
citizen. ( 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 103 

army, the church, or the bar, is of small consequence. 
Prior to the calling of his family, Nature calls him to 
human life. To live is the craft I desire to teach 
him. When he leaves my hands, I admit he will be 
neither magistrate, soldier, nor priest; he will be, 
first of all, a man ; all that a man may be, he will be 
able to be, as well as any one. Whatever changes 
Fortune may have in store for him, he will always be 
in his place." ^ "To live," according to Rousseau, 
"is not to breathe; it is to act, to use our organs, our 
senses, our faculties, and all the parts of us that give 
us the feeling of our existence. Tlie man who has 
lived most is not he who has counted the greatest 
number of years, but he Avho has felt life most." ^ 

Rousseau, then, undertakes to train men to live, 
that is, to enjoy the maximum of feeling, with as little 

1 Rousseau everywhere fails to distinguish between those social 
functions which are essential to man as man — family duties, citi- 
zenship — from those which are not, such as particular crafts and 
professions. It is not incumbent upon every man to be a black- 
smith or a physician, but it is incumbent on every one to be a good 
citizen. This failure vitiates his entire educational system, and 
has led to serious practical consequences. 

2 This is another of Rousseau's cardinal errors. He makes life 
consist in feeling, but forgets that all the distinctness, variety, and 
wealth of feeling are due to intellectual categories. Without these, 
feeling, if it were anything, would be, at best, but a vague, mean- 
ingless stirring. Rousseau was led into this error by the prevalent 
thought of his time, which divorced ideas from sensible things, and 
tried to construct a dogmatic system out of them, as so divorced. 
Hume and Kant partly put an end to this kind of thought ; but the 
world has been slow to find it out. The truth is, that the man who 
lives most, is he who most completely translates feeling (which 
includes sensation and desire) into thought and will, and thus rises 
above animality and instinct. Feeling is but seed-life. The " tree 
of life," of which whoso eats lives forever, is made up of knowledge 
and will, continuous thought, and moral self-direction and restraint. 



104 ROUSSEAU 

reflection and restraint as may be.^ In dealing with 
the earliest years of the child's life, when undiffer- 
entiated feeling and desire predonainate, he lays down 
many sensible, mostly negative, rules. The young 
child is not to be swaddled, confined, or rocked, but 
to be allowed the utmost freedom of limb and voice; 
it is to be nursed and tended by its mother, and not 
by a hired nurse, and exposed to a reasonable amount 
of heat, cold, and risk, in order that it may become 
robust and courageous. Its cries must be attended to 
at once, in so far as they express real needs, but no 
further. If it wilfully uses crying in order to obtain 
what it wants, but does not need, it must neither be 
awed into silence nor indulged. In the former case 
it will learn to submit to authority, in the latter, to 
exercise it. " A child spends six or seven years in 
this way, in the hands of women, a victim of their 
caprices or of his own, and . . . after Nature has 
been stifled by passions artificially created, this fac- 
titious creature is turned over to a tutor, who com- 
pletes the development of the artificial germs which 
he finds already formed, and who teaches him every- 
thing except to know himself, to make the most of 
himself, to live and make himself happy. ^ Finally, 
when this slavish and tyrannical child, crammed 

1 Cf. Goethe, Faust, Pt. I., lines 38-50. The passage is quoted 
on p. 113. Faust is everywhere a protest against the teaching of 
Rousseau, represented by Mephistopheles. 

2 Happiness, or what we call "a good time," Rousseau desired, 
above all things, for himself, and, therefore, for children — which 
was the surest way not to get it, as he discovered to his cost. 
Happiness, as such, can never be a true or worthy human aim. 
See the closing sections of Romola. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 105 

with knowledge and devoid of sense, as weak of body 
as of soul, is thrown into the world, to display his 
ineptitude, his pride, and all his vices, he makes us 
deplore human misery and perversity. But we are 
mistaken: he is the child of our whims. Nature's 
child is quite different." 

But how is this sad result to be avoided? Rousseau 
answers : " Stand guard over him from the moment he 
oomes into the world. Take possession of him, and 
do not leave him till he is a man. You will not suc- 
ceed otherwise." Father and mother, as the natural 
tutor and nurse, must combine all their efforts to de- 
velop the nature of the child. And Eousseau says 
some admirable and much-needed things on the duty 
of parents in this respect. The bosom of the family 
is the proper place for early education, and there is 
no more sacred or delightful duty than that of educat- 
ing children. "A father, when he begets and feeds 
his children, performs but one-third of his task. He 
owes men to his kind, sociable men to society, citizens 
to the state. Every man who can pay this triple debt, 
and fails to do so, is culpable, and perhaps more cul- 
pable when he half pays it. Neither poverty, nor 
work, nor any human consideration relieves a man 
from the duty of rearing and educating his children 
himself. Reader, you may take my word for it: I 
warn every one who has a heart and neglects such 
sacred duties, that he will long shed bitter tears over 
his fault, and will never be consoled." ^ 

1 In writing this, Rousseau thought of his own sad example ; see 
Confessions, Bk. XIII. At the same time, he was glad that the 
Duchess of Luxembourg, who tried to find his abandoned chil- 



106 ROUSSEAU 

In spite of this, Rousseau, with singular inconsist- 
ency, shrinks from attempting to show in detail how 
parents may educate their own children. Instead of 
this, he selects circumstances altogether exceptional 
and artificial. "I have resolved to give myself an 
imaginary pupil, to suppose myself of the proper age, 
and possessed of health, knowledge, and all the talents 
required by one who would labor on his education, 
and to guide him from the moment of his birth to the 
moment when, as a full-grown man, he will require 
no guide but himself." The model tutor must be 
young, boyish in tastes and feeling, and above accept- 
ing money for his services. "There are professions 
so noble, that no one can pursue them for money 
without showing that he is unworthy to pursue them." 
He must be willing to take charge of his pupil for 
twenty-five years; for change of tutors is fatal. He 
must realize that he has but one duty, — to teach his 
pupil the duties of man. As to the pupil, he must be 
of good family, of robust health, of ordinary ability, 
rich,^ born in a temperate climate, preferably in 
France, and — an orphan. The tutor will choose for 
his ward, at birth, a nurse healthy in body and in 
heart, of good character and temperate habits, cleanly, 
gentle, patient, and willing to remain with the child 
as long as it needs a nurse. The tutor and the nurse 
must be in complete accord, and the child never dream 
of any change of government ; in short, the tutor will 

dren, did not succeed. Rousseau's finest theories had nothing to 
do with his practice. He was moral only for rhetorical purposes, 
and in imagination. 

1 "The poor," he says, "need no education; that furnished by 
their condition is compulsory ; they can have no other." 



EOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 107 

order everytliing. The directions which Eousseau 
gives regarding the treatment and food of the infant, 
and the regimen and mode of life of the nvirse are, in 
the main, excellent. They may be summed up in the 
one precept : Let Nature have her way. " The child 
at birth is already the pupil, not of the tutor, but of 
Nature. The tutor merely studies under this first 
teacher and prevents her efforts from being balked. 
He watches the baby, observes it, follows it, descries 
the first dawning of its feeble intelligence." 

Kousseau rightly insists that man's education begins 
at his birth, and that what is acquired unconsciously 
far exceeds, in amount and importance, what is ac- 
quired consciously and through instruction,^ "All is 
instruction for animate, sensible beings." What he 
says with regard to the gradual growth of a world in 
the child's consciousness ^ is in every way admirable, 
and forestalls many of the results of our latest psy- 
chology. Eousseau, indeed, was a psychologist of 
the first rank. *'The first sensations of children," he 
says, "are purely affective; they perceive only pleas- 
ure and pain. Being unable either to walk or grasp, 
they require a great deal of time for the gradual for- 
mation of those representative sensations ^ which show 

1 This is a truth to which kindergfertners ought to give serious heed, 

2 Had he pursued this thought, and not been led astray by his 
own personal feelings, he would have told us that education is 
nothing more or less than the formation, in the child's conscious- 
ness, of a rational world, that is, of a world in which every object 
and act has its true distinguishing relations for intellect, and its 
true distinguishing value for affection. 

3 Pre-Kantian metaphysics still allowed people to use such ex- 
pressions as this ; but in the next clause Rousseau shows that he 
has a glimpse of the truth. 



108 ROUSSEAU 

them the objects outside of themselves; but, while 
these objects are multiplying, withdrawing, so to 
speak, from their eyes, and assuming for them dimen- 
sions and shapes, the return of the affective sensations 
begins to subject them to the rule of habit"; and 
habit is something to be avoided. " Food and sleep, 
too exactly measured, become necessary for them at 
stated intervals ; and soon tlie desire arises, not from 
need, but from habit ; or, rather, habit adds a new need 
to that of Nature. This must be prevented." . . . 
*' The only habit which the child should be allowed to 
contract is the habit of contracting none. Let it not 
be carried on one arm more than on the other; let it 
not be accustomed to offer one hand rather than the 
other, or to use it more frequently, to eat, sleep, act 
at stated times, or to be unable to remain alone either 
night or day. Prepare, a long way in advance, for 
the dominion of its freedom, and the use of its 
powers, by leaving its body to its natural habits, and 
placing it in a condition to be always its own mas- 
ter, and in all things to carry out its own will, as 
soon as it has one." ^ 

1 These precepts are both unnatural and un-wise. Even in a 
"state of Nature," children learn habits from the very first. In- 
deed, it may be safely said that all evolution, whether in Nature or 
Culture, is due to the acquisition of habits. Habit is merely the 
incarnation and organization of experience and action, by which 
both become easier and richer, and leave room for advance. It is 
economy of energy. To be consistent, Rousseau ought to have 
said : Do not allow the child to see with its eyes, rather than its 
ears, or to walk on its feet rather than on its head. Seeing with 
the eyes is no less the result of habit than right-handedness. And 
what is all excellence but perfected habit? How does the great 
musician learn to play or sing except by habit ? What is all social 
life but an agreement about habits? What is language but the 



KOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 109 

What Kousseau next says of the necessity and the 
method of freeing the chikl early, by careful habitua- 
tion (!), from those irrational fears and repulsions 
which derange so many lives — fear of spiders, toads, 
mice, masks, detonations, darkness, etc. — is excel- 
lent; but he records a very exceptional experience 
when he says, " I have never seen a peasant — man, 
woman, or child — afraid of spiders." Much of that 
unlovely trait of fastidiousness, Avhich at the present 
day so often degenerates into cruel unsympathy for all 
that is not immaculate, sweet-scented, and aesthetic, 
is due to a neglect of Rousseau's precepts. 

In course of time, the child emerges from mere 
"affective " sensations, and begins to construct, out of 
that portion of these which is less urgent, a world of 
things in time and space. What Rousseau has to say 
of this transition contains much truth, and testifies 
to fine observation ; but it is marred throughout by a 
false metaphysics, which made him think that the 
world of external objects is one thing, and the sys- 
tem of his organized sensations another. What can 
we say to a passage like the following, for example ? 
" In the early part of life, when memory and imagina- 

habit of using the same sounds for the same thoughts ? Had Rous- 
seau said that, while education is the acquisition of habits that 
create a world of harmony between the individual and his fellow- 
beings, conscious and unconscious, and, therefore, the very condi- 
tion of life and progress, yet the individual should be careful not 
to allow any habit to master him, when it proves prejudicial to 
such life or progress, he would have uttered a great and fruitful 
truth. But his whole vision was dimmed by the false notion that 
the normal man is the natural man, and the latter a solitary sav- 
age, obedient to his momentary instincts and caprices. Such a 
man never did, or could, exist. 



110 ROUSSEAU 

tion are still inactive, the cliild attends only to what 
affects its senses. Its sensations being the first mate- 
rials of its knowledge, by offering them to it in a 
suitable order we are preparing its memory to fur- 
nish them, later, in the same order, to its understand- 
ing; but, since it attends only to its sensations, it 
is enough at first to show it very distinctly the 
connection of these same sensations with the objects 
that cause them." Just as if the very objects were 
not groups of sensations, already organized into things 
in time and space, by the activity of the distinguish- 
ing understanding ! And as if a child, attentive only 
to sensations, could be conscious of any objects to 
refer them to! When it is conscious of such objects, 
its understanding has already been at work in com- 
plicated and far-reaching ways. Rousseau's prejudice 
in favor of sensation, and against understanding, 
closed his eyes to the most obvious facts, and led him 
into the gravest errors with regard to early education.^ 
Man is a " rational animal " from the first moment of 
his existence. His first conscious feeling, however 
vague, implies an act of the understanding, which is 
busy organizing sensations long before it knows any- 
thing of an "external world." His very body is but 
organized sensation. Rousseau, however, failing to 
see this, but recognizing that the notions of good and 
evil are due to reason, maintains that, in its earliest 
years, the child is incapable of any moral education : 
if controlled at all, it must bo controlled by simjile 

1 In this connection should be read Rosmini's unfinished work, 
The Ruling Principle of Method in Education, translated by Mrs. 
William Grey. Boston: D. C Heath & Co. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 111 

force. "Reason alone," he says, "acquaints us with 
good and evil. The conscience, which makes us love 
the one and hate the other, though independent of 
reason, cannot develop without it.^ Before the age of 
reason, we do good and evil without knowing that we 
do, and there is no morality in our actions, although 
there sometimes is in the feeling about others' actions 
having relation to us. A child tries to upset every- 
thing he sees; he breaks or rends everything he car. 
lay his hands upon ; he grasps a bird as he Avould a 
stone, and chokes it without knowing what he is 
doing." 

Eousseau is entirely right in maintaining that such 
actions imply no innate evil on the part of the child, 
being merely so many modes in which it gives effec- 
tive expression to its undisciplined activity; nor is 
he wrong when he says that the child's desire to 
dominate others and make them act for it — a desire 
which readily degenerates into tyranny, impatience, 
badness — proceeds from the same source. To pre- 
vent such degenerations, he lays down four maxims, 
whose intent, he says, is "to give more real liberty 
and less authority (empire) to children, to allow them 
to do more for themselves, and exact less from others." 
The gist of them is, that the child should be helped, 
as far as necessary, to do whatever is really necessary 
for its physical Avell-being, and no farther; that no 
attention should be paid to its whims, opinions, or 

1 Here again we have both had psychology and had metaphysics. 
That which cannot develop without something else is surely not 
independent of that something; for a thing is not distinct from its 
development. And surely the love of good is not something irra- 
tional ; nor is the mind a group of separate " faculties." 



112 EOUSSEAU 

irrational desires. This would be unexceptionable, 
if the child's spiritual needs had been taken into ac- 
count; but the omission is characteristic of Eousseau. 
The first book of jSmile closes with a number of 
disconnected precepts, such as, that a child should 
never be allowed to have anything because it cries 
for it; that it shoukl not be weaned too soon; that it 
'\ should not be fed on milk gruel ; that it should not 
^lave heaps of gaudy and expensive toys; that it 
Should be made to cut its teeth on soft objects; that 
it should be confined to a small vocabulary, but 
taught to articulate its words correctly from the first. 
Most of these are wise, and certainly " according to 
Nature ! " 



CHAPTER VI 

ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 

Childhood 

{iSmile, Bk. II.) 

Despise but Reason and Science, man's supreme power; 
allow thyself but toJse confirmed by the Spirit of Lies in works 
of glamor and enchantment, then I htfve thee already without 
condition. — (Mephistopheles in) Faust, Vt. I., Imes 1498-1502 
(Schroer). . 



With the advent of language, infancy closes, and 
cliildliood, in the narrower sense, begins. Tears and 
cries, having now found a substitute, should be dis- 
couraged, and every effort made to free the child from 
timidity and querulousness. Dangerous weapons and 
fire should be kept out of his way ; but otherwise he 
should be allowed the utmost freedom, and as little 
notice as possible taken of his occasional bumps and 
bruises, which are valuable experiences. He should 
not be taught anything that he can naturally find out 
for himself — not even to walk or climb. Having 
complete freedom, he will get a few contusions, but 
therewith a great deal of invaluable training. " It is 
at this second stage," says Eousseau, "that the life 
of the individual properly begins ; it is now that he 
attains self-consciousness. Memory extends the feel- 
ing of identity to all the moments of his existence; 
I 113 



114 ROUSSEAU 

lie becomes truly one and the same, and consequently 
already capable of happiness or misery. He must 
henceforth be considered as a moral being." This is, 
indeed, a new stage ! 

To Rousseau, moral existence obviously means 
capability of happiness or misery. To be moral is to 
be happy; to be immoral is to be miserable; and, 
given his point of view, no other conclusion could 
well have been reached. It follows that every effort 
ought to be made to insure the happiness of the child. 
"Of children that are born," he says, "half, at most, 
reach adolescence, and your pupil will probably never 
reach manhood. What, then, are we to think of that 
barbarous education which sacrifices the present to an 
uncertain future, which loads a child with all sorts 
of chains, and begins by rendering it miserable, in 
order to prepare for it some distant, pretended hap- 
piness, which it will probably never enjoy ? " . . . 
"Who knows how many children perish victims of 
the extravagant wisdom of a father or a teacher ? 
Happy to escape from his cruelty, they derive no other 
advantage from the woes he has made them suffer 
than this, that they die without regretting a life of 
which they have known only the torments." . . . 
" Fathers, do you know the moment when death awaits 
your children ? Do not prepare regret for yourselves 
by depriving them of the few moments which Nature 
lends them. As soon as they are able to feel the 
pleasure of being, see that they enjoy it; take care 
that, whenever it may please God to call them, they 
do not die without having tasted life." . . . "You 
will tell me that this is the time for correcting man's 



KOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 115 

evil inclinations ; that it is in childhood, when pains 
are least felt, that we should multiply them, in order 
to forestall them for the age of reason. But who has 
told you that this arrangement is within your power, 
or that all these fine instructions, with which you load 
the weak mind of a child, will not one day be more 
pernicious than useful to him? "... " Why do you 
impose on him more evils than his condition can bear, 
without being sure that these present evils will be 
made up for in the future? And how will you prove 
to me that those evil inclinations, Avhich you pretend 
to cure, do not come from your ill-advised care, far 
more than from Nature? Miserable foresight, which 
renders a being unhappy in the present, in the ill- 
founded hope of making him happy in the future ! " 
... " We do not know what absolute happiness or 
unhappiness is. Everything is mixed in this life. 
We never taste a pure feeling ; we are never two min- 
utes in the same state." . . . "Good and evil are 
common to us all, but in different degrees. The hap- 
piest is he who suffers fewest pains; the unhappiest 
he who feels fewest pleasures. Always there are 
more sufferings than enjoyments: that is the differ- 
ence common to all. The felicity of man here below 
is, therefore, only a negative state. It must be esti- 
mated by the smallness of the number of evils which 
he suffers." 

" Every feeling of pain is inseparable from the desire 
to be delivered from it ; every idea of pleasure is in- 
separable from the desire to enjoy it; every desire 
supposes privation. Hence, it is in the disproportion 
between our desires and our faculties that our misery 



116 ROUSSEAU 

lies." . . . "Where, then, lies human wisdom or the 
way to true happiness ? " . . . "It lies in diminish- 
ing the excess of our desires over our faculties, and 
establishing a perfect equality between power and 
will. It is only when this is done that, though all 
the powers are in action, the soul will, nevertheless, 
remain peaceful, and man be well ordered. It is thus 
that Nature, which does everything for the best, ar- 
ranged matters at the beginning." ... "It is only 
in this primitive state that equilibrium between 
power and desire is found, and that man is not un- 
happy." ... "It is the imagination that extends 
for us the measure of things possible, whether in good 
or evil, and which, consequently, excites and nourishes 
the desires with the hope of satisfaction. But the ob- 
ject, which at first seemed close at hand, flees quicker 
than we can pursue it. When we think we are reach- 
ing it, it transforms itself and appears afar off." . . . 
"Thus we exhaust ourselves, without reaching our 
goal, and the more we gain on enjoyment, the further 
happiness withdraws from us. On the other hand, 
the nearer man remains to his natural condition, the 
smaller is the difference between his faculties and his 
desires, and, therefore, the less distance is he removed 
from happiness. He is never less miserable than 
when he seems deprived of all; ^ for misery does not 
consist in being deprived of things, but in the need 
which is felt for them." . . . "The real world has 
its limits; the world of the imagination is infinite. 
Being unable to enlarge the one, let us contract the 

1 It is Rousseau the vagabond that speaks here. See pages 
33 sq. 



KOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 117 

other." . . . "When we say that man is weak, what 
do we mean? The word weakness signifies a rela- 
tion." . . • "He whose power is greater than his 
needs, were he an insect or a worm, is a strong being. 
He whose needs are greater than his power, were he 
a conqueror, a hero, or a god, is a weak being. Man 
is very strong when he is content to be what he is ; he 
is very weak when he tries to rise above humanity.'- 
Do not, tlierefore, imagine that, in enlarging your 
faculties, you are enlarging your powers. On the 
contrary, you are diminishing them, if your pride en- 
larges more yet." . . . " It is by laboring to increase 
our happiness that we turn it into misery. Any man 
who should be contented to live merely, would live 
happy, and therefore would live good; for what ad- 
vantage would he have in being bad ? " 

"Everything is folly and contradiction in human 
institutions." . . . "Foresight ! foresight, which 
continually carries us beyond ourselves, and often 
places us where we shall never really arrive, is the 
true source of all our miseries. "What folly for an 
ephemeral being, like man, to be looking forever into 
a distant future, which rarely comes, and to neglect 
the present, of which he is sure ! " . . . " Is it 
Nature that thus carries men so far from tliemselves ? " 
. . . "0 man! concentrate thine existence within 
thyself, and thou wilt no longer be miserable. Re- 
main in the place which Nature has assigned thee in 
the scale of beings ; nothing can make thee leave it. 
Do not recalcitrate against the hard law of necessity, 

1 Goethe, Faust, Prologue in Heaven, puts this sentiment in the 
mouth of Mephistopheles. Lines 45-50, 58-65. 



118 ROUSSEAU 

and do not, by trying to resist it, exhaust the powers 
which heaven has lent thee, not to extend or prolong 
thine existence, but merely to preserve it, as, and as 
long as, it pleases the same. Thy liberty, thy power, 
extend only as far as thy natural forces, and no 
further. All the rest is but slavery, illusion, pres- 
tige." . . . "Even dominion is servile, when it rests 
on opinion; for thou dependest on the prejudices of 
those thou governest through prejudice." . . . "The 
only man who does his will is he who, in order to do 
so, has no need to eke out his own arms with those of 
another ; whence it follows that the first of all blessings 
is not authority, hut liberty. This is my fundamental 
maxim. We have but to apply it to childhood, and 
all the rules of education will flow from it." 

It has seemed well to make this long quotation, 
because it contains Rousseau's fundamental view of 
life, and the kernel of his educational theory. The 
end of life is happiness, and happiness is the sensu- 
ous enjoyment of each moment, as it passes, without 
thought, plan, or aspiration for higher things, nay, 
without regard to others. All efforts after a divine 
life of deep insight, strong, just affection, and far- 
reaching beneficent will; all unions among men for 
the realization of this life, in and through society, are 
folly and contradiction. To live as the beast lives, in 
his appointed place, is the chief end of man. Because 
some children die before they reach youth or man- 
hood, it is cruel to deprive any, through discipline, 
self-denying, continuous tasks, or thought of the 
future, of the manifold, thoughtless delights of the 
present. 1 Discipline and self-control have no value in 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 119 

themselves; at best they are but means for future 
pleasure. The child that dies without having enjoyed 
pleasure has not "tasted of life."J Ko matter what 
his spiritual attainments, or the beauty and nobility 
of his character, his existence has been a failure. 
L_Whatever interferes with present pleasure is eviQ 
It would hardly be possible to form a more pitiful 
conception of human life and education than this. 
There is not a moral or noble trait in it.] The truth 
is, Rousseau was so purely a creature of sense and 
undisciplined impulse that he never, for one moment, 
rose to a consciousness of any moral life at all. He 
could not, therefore, take delight in it. Noblesse 
oblige, the ruling maxim of the unselfish, moral, and 
social man, was in him replaced by the maxim of the 
selfish, undutiful churl and reprobate, Bonheur invite. 
But, in spite of all this, nay, by reason of it, Rousseau 
and his theories are most interesting and fruitful ob- 
jects of study. In days when uncontrolled individual- 
ism still has its advocates, it is well fully to realize 
what it means. And this is what Rousseau has told 
us, in a siren song of mock-prophetic unction, which 
readily captivates and lures to destruction vast crowds 
of thoughtless sentimentalists. He has told us, fur- 
ther, in the same tone, how children may be prepared 
for a life of individualism ; and his sense-drunk rav- 
ings, in denunciation of all moral discipline, have 
been, and still are, received as divine oracles by mil- 
lions of parents and teachers, who have the training 
of children in their hands. / And hence it has come to 
pass that the old maxim : Train up a child in the way 
that he should go, has been replaced by this other : 



120 ROUSSEAU 

See that the child have a "good time." No wonder 
that Good Time has become the chief American god! 

Rousseau's education according to Nature, starting 
from an utterly calumnious notion of child-nature, 
and of human nature in general, and ignoring all that 
is characteristic and noble in both, proves to be an 
education for pure, reckless individualism, destruc- 
tive of all social institutions, and all true civiliza- 
tion. Its aim is the undisputed rule of caprice. 

But to proceed. True to his principles, Rousseau 
maintains that children should not be taught obedi- 
ence : ^ their relations to persons should be exactly the 
same as their relations to things, which resist, but do 
not command. Human relations should be replaced 
by mechanical relations, if the precious individuality 
of the child is to be safeguarded. When a child tries 
to go beyond his natural limitations, he is not to be 
forbidden, but prevented. He is to meet the iron law 
of Nature everywhere, the love of humanity nowhere. 
Nature is to be all in all. 

If children are not to obey, neither are they to com- 
mand-^ not even when they accompany their com- 
mands with Please, or If you please. They are to be 
listened to only when they ask for things good for 
them. " The surest way to render your child miser- 
able is to accustom him to obtain everything he 
wants." His needs are really few, and the fewer the 
better. By humoring him, you make him a despot, 

1 " No one," he says, "not even the father, has a right to 
command a child to do what is of no good to him." Were he com- 
manded to do what is good for others, he miglit in time become 
generous, and degenerate into civilization. Cf. Carpenter's Civili- 
zation, its Cause and Cure. 



EOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 121 

" at once tlie vilest of slaves and the wretchedest of 
creatures." . . . " AVeakness, united with despotism, 
begets but folly and misery." The rule is: "Give to 
children, as far as possible, everything that can afford 
them a real pleasure; refuse them whatever they ask 
from a mere whim, or to perform an act of authority." 
Of course, children, as natural creatures, are never 
to be reasoned with : Nature never reasons. "I see 
nothing more stupid, " says Eousseau, " than children 
that have been reasoned with." . . . "Use force 
with children, and reason with men; such is the 
natural order." Moreover, such things as loyalty to 
parents, and affectionate respect for their wishes, as 
such, must never be appealed to. The result might 
be deference, something altogether unknown to Nature 
and hostile to liberty. The child must be guided 
solely by the hard yoke of natural necessity, " Thus 
you will render him patient, equable, resigned, and 
peaceful, even when he does not get what he wishes ; 
for it is in the nature of man to endure patiently the 
necessity of things, but not the ill will of others." 
. . . "No one ought to undertake to rear a child, 
unless he knows how to guide him where he wishes 
by the sole laws of the possible and the impossible. 
The sphere of both being equally unknown to him, 
may be widened or narrowed about him as one pleases. 
He may be bound, pushed, or held back, with merely 
the chain of necessity, without his murmuring. He 
may be rendered supple and docile by the mere force 
of things, and vice have no occasion to spring up in 
him ; for the passions are never roused so long as they 
are without effect." In this way he will never learn 



122 KOUSSEAU 

what kindness is, and so acquire the unnatural sen- 
timent of gratitude, or, indeed, any sentiment of a 
human sort. He will be as natural as a kitten ! 

It follows from such principles that the child must 
neither be chidden, punished, nor called upon to beg 
pardon. " Devoid of all moi'ality in his actions, he 
can do nothing that is morally evil, or that deserves 
chastisement or reprimand.^' And yet the child was 
declared, a little before, to be a moral being (see p. 114). 

Returning once more to his favorite incontestable 
maxim, " that the first movements of Nature are always 
right: that there is no original perversity in the 
human heart," Rousseau insists that "the greatest, 
most important, and most useful rule of all education 
is, not to gain time, but to lose it." . . . "Early 
education must, therefore, be purely negative. It 
consists, not in teaching virtue or truth, but in guard- 
ing the heart from vice and the mind from error. If 
you could do nothing, and allow nothing to be done; 
if you could guide your pupil, healthy and robust, to 
the age of twelve years, without his being able to dis- 
tinguish his right hand from his left, — the eyes of his 
understanding would open to reason at your first les- 
sons. Without prejudices, without habits, he would 
have nothing to counteract the effect of your solici- 
tude. He would soon become in your hands the 
wisest of men ; and, by beginning with doing nothing, 
you would have made a prodigy of education." . . . 
" Do the opposite of what is usually done, and you 
will always do well." . . . "Exercise the child's 
body, his organs, his senses, his strength; but keep 
his mind indolent as long as possible." . . . "Look 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 123 

upon all delays as advantages ... let childhood 
ripen in children." ... "If a lesson has to be 
given, do not give it to-day, if it can be put off till 
to-morrow." 

This is what Rousseau calls natural education; but 
it is, in fact, almost the most artificial education con- 
ceivable. It is cloistral and worse. Nature is made 
to exclude its highest manifestations, and then the 
child, instead of being allowed to come freely in con- 
tact with the brute remainder, is watched, dogged, 
guided, and forcibly controlled at every step; and all 
for the sake of keeping him in a condition of sub- 
moral, sub-human innocence. Rousseau forgot that 
a child's capacity for enjoyment even is proportioned 
to his intelligence; and so, while he maintained that 
a child should not be deprived of present, for the sake 
of future, pleasure, for fear that the latter might 
never come, he insisted that he should be deprived of 
present, for the sake of future, instruction, though 
the latter is subject to the same risks. But Rousseau 
thought of his own early corruption, and despised 
logic. We have only to compare the twelve-year-old 
American boy, who, mixing freely with Nature, in 
its broadest sense, contrives, by pluck, intelligence, 
and cloisterless self-control, to earn his own, and per- 
haps others', livelihood, with Rousseau's helpless, 
artificial product, to realize the value of his educa- 
tional system. 

" But where, " says Rousseau, " shall we place this 
child, in order to rear him thus, like an insensible 
being, an automaton? Shall we keep him in the 
moon? Or in a desert island? Shall we remove him 



124 ROUSSEAU 

from human kind? Will he not have continually 
before him, in the world, the spectacle and example 
of others' passions? Will he never see other children 
of his own age? Will he not see his relations, nurse, 
governess, footman, and even his tutor, who, after all, 
will not be an angel ? " Rousseau feels the difficulty 
of these questions, and answers that the tutor must 
do his best to be an angel, and then retire, with his 
pupil, to a remote country village, where, by inspir- 
ing the villagers with respect and affection, he can 
practically control everybody and everything, and be 
beyond reach of the evil influence of cities. In this 
retreat, the child, entirely in the hands of his unpaid 
tutor, and dependent on his resources for everything, 
will vegetate, and learn what he cannot help, by ex- 
amples. When he sees a peasant angry, he will be 
told that he is ill, and thus learn to avoid anger. 
When he plants beans in a peasant's melon-patch, and, 
after he has spent much care on them, the peasant 
comes and pulls them up, "the heart-broken child 
will fill the air with sobs and screams,"^ and have 
his first feeling of injustice.^ On learning, however, 
that the peasant has only done to him what he has 
first done to the peasant, and that, besides, the land 
belongs to the peasant, he will come to have a feeling 
of justice. One of the tutor's chief duties will be to 
arrange for practical lessons of this sort. If the pupil 
breaks a pane of glass in his room, the tutor will say 

1 Is this one of the results of "peaceful" Nature-education? 

2 This is incorrect. He would feel merely disappointment, not 
even resentment. The catastrophe might be due to "Nature," for 
aught he knew. There are no feelings of justice and injustice. 



EOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 125 

nothing, but leave it unrepaired until the pupil catches 
a violent cold,^ and then have it replaced. If he 
breaks it a second time, the tutor will remove him to 
a dark room, and shut him up there, until he volun- 
tarily agrees to break no more panes. How this dif- 
fers from punishment, it is not easy to see.^ Kousseau 
evidently thinks that moral feelings can be roused in 
a child by bringing home to him the consequences of 
his deeds. There is no greater mistake in the world. ^ 
A child may learn selfish prudence in this way ; but 
the morality of acts has nothing to do with their 
actual consequences, but only Avith their motives, or 
intended consequences. An immoral act does not 
become moral, because it brings desirable conse- 
quences. Even brute beasts learn prudence by Rous- 
seau's moral method; but they never rise to morality. 
All the morality there is connected with an act is 
realized, as a personal quality, before the performance 
of the act. 

With the rise of the moral consciousness comes the 
possibility of evil, and, among other things, of lying, 
with a view to escape consequences. Eousseau justly 
distinguishes two kinds of lies : (1) intentional mis- 
statements of facts; (2) promises not intended to be 
kept ; and he has some sensible remarks about what 
lying means to young children ; but, when he tells us 
that "trying to teach them to tell the truth is simply 
teaching them to lie," those who have had experience 

1 This result is purely arbitrary, depending not only on the sea- 
son, hut upon the position of the child's bed. 

2 In any case, he is not being educated by Nature. 

3 Herbert Spencer's work on education is vitiated throughout by 
this error. 



126 ROUSSEAU 

with children can only express utter disagreement 
with him. Again, when he tells us that the true way 
to cure a child of lying is to make him see that it is 
not his interest to lie, we can only say that he is pro- 
pounding a most immoral and pernicious doctrine — 
albeit it is of a piece with his whole ethical teaching. 
A child that tells the truth only when he thinks it 
profitable so to do, will tell lies under the same cir- 
cumstances. Lying is simply one manifestation of 
cowardice, or feebleness of will, as against undiffer- 
entiated instinct, and can be cured only by a process 
which strengthens the will, by the development of 
intelligence, and the subjection of instinct. But 
Rousseau's whole system is intended to enable men to 
dispense with the need of willing, by arranging things 
so that they shall always be able to follow their in- 
stincts — as he did! 

Generosity, meaning almsgiving, is to be taught in 
this way : " Instead of being in haste to exact acts of 
charity from my pupil, I prefer to perform them in 
his presence, and to deprive him of the means of imi- 
tating me in that, as an honor that does not belong to 
his age." . . . "If, seeing me assist the poor, he 
questions me about it, and it is the proper time to 
reply, I shall say to him: 'My friend, when the poor 
agreed that there should be rich people, the rich prom- 
ised to maintain all those who should not have the 
means of living, either from their property, or their 
labor.' ^ 'And you also have promised that? ' he will 
ask. 'Of course (I will say); I am master of the 
wealth that passes through my hands, only on the 
1 This is, of course, a pious lie. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 127 

condition attached to owning it.' After hearing these 
words . . . another than Emile would be tempted to 
imitate me, and play the rich man; in such case, I 
should at least prevent him from doing so with osten- 
tation. I should prefer to have him usurp my right, 
and give surreptitiously. This is a fraud natural to 
his age, and the only one I should forgive in him." 
In other words, Emile would not give at all, or give 
through vanity, as a rich man! 

Rousseau admits that all virtues acquired in this 
way are merely monkey virtues, unreflective imita- 
tions, and therefore not moral; and, though fully 
conscious of the possible evils springing from imita- 
tion, he yet insists that no other virtues are possible 
for the child. In this, he modestly makes his own 
nature the measure of possibility for the race. 

I The only moral lesson that he would teach children 

is "to do harm to nobodyj The injunction to do 
good, unless subordinate to this, is dangerous, false, 
and contradictory. Who is there that does no good ? 
The wicked man does good, like other people; he 
makes one happy by making a hundred unhappy ; and 
hence come all our calamities. The loftiest virtues 
are negative ; they are also the most difficult, because 
they are without show, and above the pleasure, so 
dear to the heart of man, of knowing that some one 
else is pleased with us." This is, of course, the purest 
sophistry — as if doing good to one, at the expense of 
a hundred, were doing good at all! The precept. Do 
good, includes the precept. Do no evil. But Eous- 
seau always wanted a plea for doing nothing, and he 
was not above resorting to the most pitiful sophistry 



128 ROUSSEAU 

in order to obtain one — as, for instance, in his at- 
tempt to justify himself for turning his children over 
to the foundling hospital.^ The fact here referred 
to must be allowed to have its full weight in our esti- 
mate of Rousseau's educational theories. It shows 

(1) that he had no natural love for children, and no 
interest in them — except, of course, a picturesque 
one: they were touching features in a landscape; 

(2) that, while devoted to sensuality, he had no sense 
of even the most sacred of duties. Hence his at- 
tempt to show that the most sublime virtues are 
negative — a most comfortable doctrine, amounting to 
this: Do nothing, and you will do sublimely well. 
From this maxim Rousseau drew the following con- 
clusion, whose bearing is but too obvious :p' The in- 
junction never to injure others, involves the injunction 
to have as little to do with society as possible; for in 
the social state, the good of one is necessarily the evil 
of another. This relation being in the essence of the 
thing, nothing can alter it.'"^ 

It is impossible here to enumerate all the educa- 
tional precepts that Rousseau, from this point of view, 
lays down; but they may be summed up under three 
general heads : (1) Do everything to place children in 
easy, fearless contact with sub-human nature and its 

1 Confessions, Bks. VII., VIII. 

2 Then follows the second quotation at the head of Chapter II. 
It is needless to say that the assertion itself is the exact opposite 
of the truth, and subversive of all civilization. Cf. Lowell's fine 
line in The Present Crisis : 

" In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal claim," 

and Creon's first speech in Sophocles' Antigone. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 129 

necessary laws; that is, make them, as far as possible, 
automata; ^ (2) Do everything to prevent their having 
any relations to human nature, as such, by with- 
drawing them, as far as possible, from society, and 
turning those persons with whom they must come in 
contact into automata; (3) Hoodwink them into think- 
ing that everything which you, as the representative 
of Nature, desire them to do, is imposed by natural 
necessity.^ 

In accordance with the first of these, children are 
to have their muscles, nerves, and senses carefully 
trained, in savage fashion. They are to be encour- 
aged, or bribed,^ to run, leap, climb, balance them- 
selves, and to move heavy masses. They are to 

1 Cf. quotation on p. 123. 

2 "Are not all his surroundings, as far as they relate to him, under 
your control ? " . . . " Of course, he must do only what he wishes; 
but he must wish only what you wish him to do. He must take no 
step that you have not foreseen, nor open his mouth without your 
knowing beforehand what he is going to say." — Emile, Bk. II. 
Such is Education according to Nature! Rousseau's long intimacy 
with the Jesuits had not been for nothing. Their cadaver is Rous- 
seau's automaton ; and his methods match theirs. Grimm said of 
him: " I know but one man who might have written an apology 
for the Jesuits in fine style . . . and that man is M. Rousseau." 
After all, a God-animated corpse is better than an automaton. 
But neither has any moral freedom. 

3 Chiefly with cakes and candy, of which Rousseau himself was 
very fond. " The proper way to govern children," he says, " is to 
guide them by the mouth. Gluttony, as a motive, is, of all things, 
preferable to vanity, because the former is a natural appetite, 
directly connected with the senses, whereas the latter is the prod- 
uct of opinion, subject to human caprice and all sorts of abuses." 
This is, of course, untrue. Darwin has shown that vanity is a 
common passion even among the lower animals, while Rousseau 
himself maintains that the animals are never gluttonous, — which 
again is untrue ! 



130 ROUSSEAU 

swim,^ to go about bareheaded and barefooted, in 
light, loose, gay clothing; to sleep on a hard bed; to 
be waked up at any hour; to be inured to heat, cold, 
knocks, and bruises ; to eat when they are hungry, and 
drink when they are thirsty — cold water, even when 
they are in a flood of perspiration. They are to play 
nightly games, involving lonely visits to forests, 
churches, and graveyards ; they are to walk, and to 
find things, in the dark, without fear or hesitation. * 
They are not to be vaccinated, because vaccination, 
though bringing certain advantages, requires the ser- 
vices of a physician — which must be avoided like 
poison.' Riding is not favored, because it is an exer- 
cise not within the reach of everybody. Besides, 
Rousseau himself disliked it. The different senses 
are to be carefully cultivated. "To exercise the 
senses is not merely to make use of them, but to 
learn to judge by means of them, to learn, so to 
speak, to feel; for we can neither touch, see, nor 
hear, except as we have learnt." In exercising the 
sense of touch, the nocturnal games, above referred 
to, are especially valuable; they may even enable us 

1 " Emile will be as much at home in the water as on land. Why 
cannot he live in all the elements? If he could be taught to fly in 
the air, I should make him an eagle ; I should make him a sala- 
mander, if he could be inured to fire." 

2 They are to be tempted to this, as usual, with candy! In this 
way, their natural dread of the dark is to be overcome. And yet 
we are told that " the caprice of children is never the work of Na- 
ture, but of bad discipline: they have either obeyed or commanded." 

3 " If we give a child small-pox, we shall have the advantage of 
foreseeing and foreknowing his disease ; but if he takes it natu- 
rally, we shall have saved him from the doctor, which is a still 
greater advantage." 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 131 

to dispense with the senses of sight and hearing — 
apparently a great advantage.^ The use of keyless 
stringed instruments dulls the sense of touch. The 
ideal instrument is the piano — which Rousseau him- 
self played! Numerous instructions are given as to 
how the eye is to be trained to estimate weights, dis- 
tances, etc. Some of the exercises are delightfully 
complicated, involving the inevitable candy, which, 
though rather a civilized product, seems to be Nature's 
bribe. This is the place for drawing and painting; 
but the objects selected must always be in Nature, 
never copies or casts. ^ In connection with all this, 
Eousseau has some admirable observations upon the 
way in which the notion of space is acquired, although 
there is a sad want of close thinking displayed in the 
delightful remark that "the whole universe can be 
only a point for an oyster." It would not even be a 
point; for a point is a very complicated conception, 

1 "We are blind half our lives, with this difference, that those 
who are really blind can always guide themselves, while we do not 
venture to take a step into the heart of the night. There are lan- 
terns, I shall be told. Yes, yes! always machines! Who can 
assure you that they will follow you everywhere when you want 
them? I prefer that Emile should have eyes in the ends of his 
fingers rather than in the chandler's shop." . . . "By putting 
one hand upon the body of a violoncello, one may, without the 
help of eyes or ears, distinguish, by the mere vibration or quiver- 
ing of the wood, whether the sound produced is high or low." . . . 
" If we would exercise our senses on these differences, I have no 
doubt that in time one might feel a whole tune with his fingers. 
If this be admitted, it follows that we might speak to the deaf in 
music." But alas ! the violoncello is a machine, M. Rousseau! 

2 Smile's room is to be adorned with his own drawings and 
paintings, placed in more and more elaborate frames in propor- 
tion to their badness. Thus the expression, " fit for a gilt frame," 
is to suggest a moral lesson, valuable later on. 



132 . ROUSSEAU 

involving the consciousness of space. For cultivating 
the sense of form, practical geometry, a matter of 
strings and cut paper, is recommended. Reasoned 
geometry is, of course, forbidden. 

For training the sense of hearing there are various 
means, chief among which is music. This, being a 
favorite occupation with Rousseau, is allowed the use 
of civilized instruments. Taste, with which smell is 
closely connected, is to be cultivated by the use of 
simple, natural food. "The Supreme Goodness, 
which has made the pleasure of sensible beings the 
instrument of their preservation, shows us, by what 
pleases our palates, what is suitable for our stomachs. 
When Nature is allowed her way, there is no safer 
physician for a man than his own appetite. In his 
primitive state, I have no doubt that the foods which 
he found most pleasant were also the most whole- 
some." Gluttony, being natural, is excused in this 
way. " Since the whole of childhood is, or ought to 
be, merely a succession of games and gleesome amuse- 
ments, I do not see why pure bodily exercises should 
not have a material and sensible prize." On the same 
principle, mental exercises ought to be rewarded with 
an abstract triangle, a fair Platonic idea, or a pleas- 
ant aspect of transcendental being! But of such 
exercises he does not approve. Singularly enough, 
Rousseau, who professes to give directions for rearing 
children in a state of Nature, maintains that they 
should not be allowed to touch animal food, which, 
if not bad for health, is bad for character. "It is 
certain that great meat-eaters are, generally, more 
cruel and tierce than other men." . . . "The bar- 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 133 

barity of the English is well known, whereas the 
Gaures are the gentlest of men. All savages are cruel, 
and this is not due to their character, but to their 
food." This is one of those delicious inconsistencies 
of which Rousseau is full. The truth is that, for 
him, savage and Jean Jacques meant the same thing, 
and of that thing he has a very good opinion. He says, 
elsewhere, that savages, " known for their keen sensi- 
bility, are still more so for their subtlety of mind." 
But the gentle savage, Jean Jacques, did not like 
meat, and so that must be a perversion of savagery. 
His assertion, moreover, that the savage, " having no 
prescribed task, obeying no law but his own will, is 
forced to reason at every action of his life," only 
shows that he knew nothing of real savage life. 

In pursuance of the second maxim, children are to 
receive no instruction that would carry them beyond 
the range of their own actual sense-experience, or 
even to reason to the conditions of that experience. 
Every kind of instruction drawing upon the past or 
present experience of the race — History, Geography, 
Grammar, Languages, Literature (even La Fontaine's 
Eables), Science — is to be excluded. There is to be 
no learning by heart, no declamation, no examination, 
no verbal expression of knowledge. "Emile will not 
chatter, he will act." All efforts at cleverness and 
bright remarks, all talkativeness, must be frowned 
down. Books are to be tabooed. " By removing all 
the duties of children," says Rousseau, "I remove the 
instruments of their greatest misery, namely, books. 
Reading is curse of childhood,^ and almost the only 
1 This is not true ; but Rousseau read bad books. 



134 ROUSSEAU 

occupation that people can invent for it. At twelve 
years of age, Emile will hardly know what a book is. 
But, I shall be told, he must at least know how to 
read, when reading is useful to him." ... "If we 
must demand nothing of children through obedience, 
it follows that they can learn nothing of which they 
do not feel the actual present advantage, in the form 
either of pleasure or of use: otherwise, what motive 
should prompt them to learn it ? The art of talking 
and listening to absent friends ... is an art that 
can be rendered sensible to human beings at any age. 
By what miracle has this useful and pleasant art 
become a torment to children ? Because we force 
them to apply themselves to it against their wills, 
and put it to uses of which they understand nothing. 
A child is never very eager to perfect the instrument 
with which he is tortured. But make this instrument 
minister to his pleasures, and he will soon apply him- 
self to it in spite of you." . . . "The present inter- 
est is the great motive, and the only one that leads 
safely and far. Emile sometimes receives from his 
father, mother, relatives, friends,^ notes of invitation 
for a dinner, a walk, a boating-party, a public festi- 
val. These notes are short, clear, neat, and well 
written. Some one must be found to read them. 
This some one is not found at the right moment, or 
pays the child out for some disobliging conduct of 
the day before. Thus the opportunity, the moment, 
passes. The note is at last read to him; but it is too 
late! Oh! if he had only been able to read himself! 

1 N.B. Emile is supposed to be an orphan, and to live apart from 
society. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 135 

Others are received: they are so short; the subject 
of them is so interesting; he would like to decipher 
them; sometimes he finds help and sometimes a re- 
fusal. He exerts himself and finally deciphers half 
of a note : it is an invitation to go to-morrow to eat 
cream — he does not know where or with whom. 
How he struggles to read the rest!" . . . "Shall I 
speak now of writing ? No; I am ashamed to amuse 
myself with such nonsense in a treatise on education." 
This is a typical specimen of Rousseau's natural 
method, which, assuming that the child has only 
animal motives, makes no effort to correct or replace 
them. What notion of man and society would be 
suggested to a child, if the people about him, in order 
to be even with him, — poor little animal! — should 
refuse to read a note for him? It is safe to say that 
it would be both hateful and false, — in fact, Kous- 
seau's own diseased notion (see p. 74). For Rousseau 
hated the human in humanity: he hated science,* 
true love, and energy of will, being incapable of all 

1 He says : " I teach ray pupil a very long and very painful art — 
the art of being ignorant ; for the science of any one who does not 
flatter himself that he knows more than he really does know, re- 
duces itself to very small bulk." The martyrdom of study is 
described in these affecting terms: "The clock strikes. What a 
change ! In an instant, his eye loses its lustre ; his gayety van- 
ishes. Good-bye to joy ! good-bye to gleesome games ! A severe, ill- 
tempered man takes him by the hand, and gravely says to him: 
' Let us go, sir,' and leads him away. In the room which they 
enter, I catch a glimpse of books. Books! what sad furniture for 
his age ! The poor child submits to being dragged along, turns a 
regretful eye upon everything about him, holds his peace, and goes 
off, his eyes swollen with tears which he dare not shed, and his 
heart big with sighs which he dare not give vent to." It is needless 
to comment on such stuff ! 



136 ROUSSEAU 

three. Hence lie deprecated all culture of intellect, 
affection, and will, of all that makes man, life, and 
the world human. 

Of the third maxim it is sufficient to say that, ac- 
cording to Rousseau, children are to be so managed 
that what is, in reality, the result of the most careful 
forethought, shall seem natural and necessary; in 
other words, that they shall, from first to last, be vic- 
tims of a pious fraud. By means of this, the child is 
to be dehumanized, to be made a victim and a dupe. 
How small must his intelligence and his observation 
be, to make such dupery possible ! 



CHAPTER VII 

ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 

Boyhood 

{j^mile, Bk. III.) 

I slept and dreamt that life was Beauty : 
I woke and found that life was Duty. 

When a boy has learnt his letters and is beginning to under- 
stand what is written, as before he understood only what was 
spoken, they put into his hands the works of great poets, which 
he reads at school ; in these are contained . . . the encomia of 
ancient famous men, which he is required to learn by heart, in 
order that ... he may desire to become like them. 

Plato, Protagoras. 

EoussEAu's solitary pupil reaches the age of twelve 
years without having learnt to do anything but pla v^ 
In playing, he has exercised his muscles, nerves, and 
senses. He has no knowledge of man; he does not 
reason; his sole motive is sensuous pleasure. But he 
is supple, alert, healthy, and docile, like a well-trained 
young dog. Moreover, he is exuberantly happy, 
because his strength is far in advance of his needs, 
and because the absorbing passion of manhood has not 
yet awakened in him. Thus the years from twelve to 
fifteen form a period of altogether exceptional free 
energy, which must be seized upon and directed — 
surreptitiously, of course — to the best ends, as Rous- 

137 



138 ROUSSEAU 

seau conceives them. This, in fact, is the time to 
cultivate the " sixth sense, which is called common 
sense, not so much because it is common to all men, 
as because it results from the well-regulated use of 
the other senses, and because it instructs us in the 
nature of things, through the convergence of all their 
appearances." "This sense," he continues, "has no 
special organ. It resides solely in the brain; and its 
sensations, which are purely internal, are called per- 
ceptions or ideas. It is by the number of these ideas 
that the extent of our knowledge is measured; it is 
their definiteness and clearness that constitutes cor- 
rectness of thinking; it is the art of comparing them 
that we call human reason. Thus, what I called sen- 
sitive, or childish, reason consists in forming simple 
ideas, by the union of several sensations ; and what I 
call intellectual or human reason consists in forming 
complex ideas, by the union of several simple ideas." 
It is hardly worth while to comment upon this crude, 
ocnsuous, chemical psychology. To have been con- 
de^nned to it was the penalty paid by Rousseau for 
his superficial acquaintance with philosophy, and his 
contempt for it. 

At this stage in their career, boys are still to be 
guided by immediate, sensuous interests. Moral mo- 
tives are to play no part. The subjects suitable for 
study are few. Of the departments of knowledge 
within our reach, some are false, others useless, others 
only minister to the conceit of their possessors. The 
few that really contribute to our well-being are alone 
worthy of the attention of a wise man, and therefore 
of a child whom we mean to turn into one. Of these 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 139 

few, again, those must be excluded which demand for 
their study a developed intelligence, such, for example, 
as those dealing with the relations of man to man. 
What remains is the experimental natural sciences, 
whose objects are the visible heaven and earth. Curi- 
osity now supervenes upon bodily restlessness, as a 
motive. But this curiosity is no mere mental or spir- 
itual need of man's. " The innate desire for well- 
being, and the impossibility of completely satisfying 
it, make him continually seek for new means of con- 
tributing to it. Such is the first principle of curi- 
osity, a principle natural to the human heart (!), but 
one whose development strictly keeps pace with our 
passions and our lights.-^ Banish a philosopher to a 
desert island, with instruments and books, and con- 
vince him that he must pass the remainder of his life 
there : he will hardly trouble himself any more about 
the system of the world, the laws of attraction, or the 
differential calculus. He will perhaps not open a 
book again in his life," This experiment, whose 
result is, to say the least, very doubtful, suffices to 
prove to Rousseau that these studies are not natural 
to man : therefore, they are to be ruled out. 

" The island of the human race is the earth. The 
object that most strikes our eyes is the sun. As soon 
as we turn away from ourselves, our attention must 
direct itself to one or the other." Geography and 
astronomy are therefore now in order. But these sub- 
jects are not to be taught by means of books, maps, 

1 It never seems to have dawned for an instant upon Rousseau 
either that there could be any intellectual needs or motives, or that 
there was any value in a developed intelligence, as such. 



140 ROUSSEAU 

globes, or charts. They are to be studied in the pres- 
ence of the objects themselves, and that, too, in the 
most matter-of-fact fashion. No feeling in the pres- 
ence of Nature's sublimities is to be looked for, " The 
child perceives objects; but he cannot perceive their 
relations; he cannot hear the sweet harmony of their 
concert." . . . "How shall the song of birds cause 
him a voluptuous emotion, if the accents of love and 
pleasure are still unknown to him ? " 

Rousseau reports various tricks and devices for 
inducing children to think what is implied in such 
natural phenomena as sunrise and sunset, and to 
represent it to themselves by means of circles and 
teetotums. The matter of geographical study is to 
be the country where the child lives, and the features 
of this he is to draw as well as he can. He is to be 
initiated into the mysteries of magnetism by means 
of wax ducks, modelled about a magnetic needle and 
made to swim about after a magnet. But lest he 
should plume himself upon this new and strange dis- 
covery, and take to showing it off, an elaborate con- 
spiracy is entered into with a professional magician 
to humble his vanity, by trickery, in presence of an 
assembled and gaping crowd; and the poor child, 
guilty of having shown one natural feeling, is once 
more reduced to the condition of a marionette. 
Rousseau congratulates himself on the result. " All 
the detail of this example means more than it seems. 
How many lessons in one! How many mortifying 
consequences flow from the first movement of vanity ! 
Young teacher, carefully watch this first movement! 
If you can make it produce humiliation and disgrace 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 141 

in this way, be sure it will be long before a second 
occurs. What elaborate preparations ! you will say. 
I agree — and all to make a compass to take the place 
of a meridian."^ This conspiracy is typical. In all 
cases the main thing is, not to impart knowledge to 
the child, but to guard him against the formation of 
false ideas, or the acceptance of any that do not grow 
out of his own individual experience. A secret eifort 
may be made to secure his continuous attention ; but 
constraint must never be applied. " It must always 
be pleasure or desire that produces this attention." 
... " It is always of less importance that the child 
should learn than that he should do nothing against 
his inclination." All attempts to make the child over- 
come his inclinations, in favor of moral action, are to 
be avoided, as useless and denaturalizing. 

In course of time — toward the age of fifteen ! — the 
child will begin to grow self-conscious, to know what 
is good for him, and to seek it. His good is simply 
sensuous well-being, without moral regard. He must 
now be induced to direct his mind to "useful objects," 
and the notion of the useful must now become his 
guiding star. He is to study nothing which he does 
not see to be useful for his own special sensuous ends. 
These are to be the limits of his curiosity. In fact, 
he is to be carefully trained in sordid selfishness, lest 
he should form false conceptions ! ^ If a child trained 
in this way should express doubts regarding the use- 
fulness of astronomy to him, he is to be cured of them 

1 Quintilian was wiser when he said: "Vanity is a vice; but it 
is the parent of many virtues." See my Aristotle, p. 220. 

2 Compare the saying of Aristotle in my Aristotle, p. 189. 



142 ROUSSEAU 

in this way. He and his tutor are to lose themselves 
in the forest. " We no longer," says Rousseau, " know- 
where we are,^ and when the time comes to return, 
we cannot find our way. The time passes ; the heat 
comes; we are hungry; we hasten; we wander vainly 
from side to side." . . . " Much heated, much disap- 
pointed, very hungry, we only lose ourselves more and 
more. Finally, we sit down, not to rest, bat to de- 
liberate." . . . "After a few moments of silence, 
I say to him, in an anxious tone, 'My dear ^fimile, 
how are we to get out of this ? ' " Emile, " dripping 
with perspiration, and weeping bitter tears," replies, 
"'I know nothing about it. I'm tired; I'm hungry; 
I'm thirsty; I'm all used up.'" They finally look at 
their watches (£mile carries a watch !) and find that 
it is noon. Knowing that their home is to the south 
of the forest, and remembering that at noon the sun 
casts his shadow to the north, they thus find out the 
direction of the south, and, following it, are soon in 
sight of home. Hereupon Emile shouts: "Let us 
breakfast ! let us dine ! let us run quick ! Astronomy 
is good for something." Thus he learns that as- 
tronomy is a useful science — useful in helping a big, 
tired, hungry cry-baby, accompanied by his tutor, to 
find his way home. And this is the child who has 
been reared as a savage, and taught to bear heat, 
cold, hunger, pain, fatigue, and to find his way in 
the dark! 

"I hate books," says Rousseau; "they only teach 
us to talk about what we don't know." Nevertheless, 
Emile is, at last, to learn to read. Then his one book 
1 This, of course, is false as regards the tutor. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 143 

is to be — Robinson Crusoe; and the reason is this: 
"Robinson Crusoe, aloue on his island, deprived of 
the aid of his fellow-nien and of the instruments of all 
the arts, and, nevertheless, providing for his own sub- 
sistence and protection, and even attaining a certain 
sort of "well-being, is an interesting object for any 
age, and may be ren'dered attractive to children in a 
thousand ways." . . . "This state, I admit, is not 
that of the social man . . . but it is by this same 
state that he must value all the rest. jThe surest way 
to rise above prejudice, and to shape one's judgment 
by the true relations of things, is to put oneself in the 
place of the isolated man, and to judge all things as 
this man, having regard to his own usefulness, must 
judge them." /Emile will be fascinated with Robin- 
son Crusoe.~^"I want him," says Rousseau, "to lose 
his head over it, to be continually absorbed by his 
castle, his goats, his plantations; to learn in detail, 
not by books, but by things, all that it is necessary 
to know in such a case ; to imagine that he is Robin- 
son himself, dressed in skins, wearing a big hat, a 
great sabre, and all the grotesque trappings of the 
figure, except the parasol, which he will not need. 
I wish him to be anxious about what he would do, if 
this or that should happen to fail, to examine his 
hero's conduct, to see if he has omitted anything, or 
if anything could be done better, to note carefully his 
faults, and to profit by them, so as not to commit 
similar ones; for you may be sure that he will plan 
to go and set up a similar establishment. This is the 
real air-castle of this blessed age, when one knows no 
other happiness than necessities and freedom." With 



144 EOUSSEAU 

these childish ^ thoughts in his head, he will be eager 
to learn all the "natural arts," that is, such arts as 
are necessary for the solitary man. He must, as long 
as possible, be prevented from taking any interest in 
those that require cooperation. "You see," says 
Rousseau, "thus far I have not spoken to my pupil 
about men. He would have too much good sense to 
listen to me. His relations with his kind are not yet 
pronounced enough to enable him to judge of others 
by himself. He knows no human being but himself, 
and himself very imperfectly; but, if he pronounces 
few judgments on himself, those he does pronounce 
are, at least, just. He knows nothing about the place 
of others ; but he feels his own, and keeps himself in 
it. Instead of social laws, which he cannot know, 
we have bound him with chains of necessity. He is 
still hardly anything more than a physical being; let 
us continue to treat him as such." 

With regard to the " natural arts " Rousseau says : 
" The first and most respectable of all the arts is agri- 
culture. I should give blacksmithing the second 
place, carpentry the third, and so on." Nevertheless, 
since agriculture is incompatible with vagabond free- 
dom, and blacksmithing untidy, he chooses carpentry 
for his pupil. "It is cleanly; it is useful; it may be 
carried on in the house; it calls upon the workman 
for dexterity and industry, and the usefulness of its 
products does not exclude elegance and taste." Rous- 
seau deprecates all crafts that are unhealthy or effemi- 

1 Most children get over the Robinson Crusoe stage by the age 
of seven. Henry Thoreau was a notable exception. See his Wal- 
den, and of. Tennyson's Enoch Arden. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 145 

nate, that deform the body, disgust the senses, or turn 
those who practise them into automata or machines. 
On the other hand, " if your pupil's genius should 
show a decided bent for the speculative sciences, 
then," he says, "I should not object to his being 
allowed to follow a craft conformable to his inclina- 
tions; to his learning, for example, to make mathe- 
matical instruments,^ spectacles, telescopes, etc." 

Eousseau, who may fairly claim the honor of being 
the father of manual training, would have every child 
learn a trade, and on this subject he makes some very 
pungent remarks. In reply to a fond mother who 
exclaims: "A handicraft for my son! My son an 
artisan! Do you think of such a thing, Sir?" he 
says, "Madam, I think better than you, who want 
to reduce him to a state in which he can never be 
anything but a lord, a marquis, a prince,^ and perhaps 
some day less than nothing; while I want to confer 
on him a rank which he cannot lose, a rank which 
shall honor him at all times : I want to raise him to 
the dignity of a man, and, say what you will, he will 
have fewer equals in that rank than in those he may 
inherit from you." While admitting that the isolated 
man may do as he pleases, he insists that in society 
everybody must work. "Work is a duty indispen- 

1 Here he was evidently thinking of Spinoza. 

2 Cf. Burns' A Man's a Man for a' That : — 

" A king can make a belted knicht, 
A marquis, duke, an' a' that ; 
But an honest man's abune his micht; 
Guid faith ! he mauna fa' that." 

Burns derived not only the thought of this poem, but many other 
things, good and evil, from Rousseau. 

L 



146 ROUSSEAU 

sable for man in society. Eich or poor, strong or 
weak, the citizen who does not work is a scoundrel." 
And manual labor is to be preferred to every other, as 
affording the greatest freedom. " Of all occupations 
fitted to yield man a subsistence, that which comes 
nearest to the state of Nature is manual toil; of all 
conditions, the most independent of fortune and of 
men is that of the artisan. He depends only on his 
labor; he is as free as the ploughman is bound; for 
the latter is tied to his land, whose crop is at the 
mercy of others." . . . "By means of this land, he 
may be harassed in a thousand ways ; whereas, if an 
attempt is made to harass an artisan, he can directly 
pull up his stakes, go off, and take his two arms with 
him." 

In learning a trade, Emile can hardly fail to realize 
that cooperation in labor is valuable, and he may be 
allowed to make some reflections on this matter, and 
to think of men as united by industrial or material 
ties, whose meaning is within his reach ; but no effort 
must be made to make him understand any other ties, 
since he has not the experience which would enable 
him to understand them. The force of this rule we 
shall see later. 

In connection with the subject of industry, Rousseau 
takes occasion to air some of his economic and socio- 
logical doctrines; and, though the bearing of these 
upon his educational theories is but indirect, it is no 
less real and important on that account. We must, 
therefore, refer to them. 

According to Rousseau, it is every man's first 
duty, imposed by Nature, to live. *' Since, of all the 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 147 

aversions with which Nature inspires us, the strongest 
is the aversion to die, it follows that Nature allows a 
man to do anything that is absolutely necessary to 
preserve his life. The principles through which the 
virtuous man learns to despise his life, and sacrifice 
himself to his duty, are far removed from this primi- 
tive simplicity. Happy the peoples, among whom 
one can be good without effort, and just without 
virtue! ^ If there is any wretched nation in the world 
in which it is not possible for every citizen to live 
without doing wrong, and where the citizens are 
rascals from necessity, it is not the wrong-doer that 
should be hanged, but he who forces him to become 
such." As if any one could be forced to do wrong 
against his will! This illogical and immoral doctrine 
has made dangerous fanatics without number, and 
encouraged criminals to hold society responsible for 
their crimes. It has, further, led to numerous at- 
tempts to moralize men by merely altering their sur- 
roundings, when the true method would have been to 
strengthen their wills through discipline, and to teach 
them that life without virtue is worthless. 

Rousseau is opposed to inherited wealth. *'The 
man or the citizen," he says, "whoever he be, has 
nothing to contribute to society but himself. All his 
other goods are in it in spite of him ; and when a man 
is rich, he either does not enjoy his wealth, or the 
public enjoys it also. In the former case, he steals 

1 la other words, among whom goodness and justice are the 
result of blind instinct, and not of progressive moral effort or 
exertion of free choice. The whole of Rousseau's moral theory is 
here. Having himself no moral will, he tried to prove that men 
might be virtuous without such a thing. 



148 KOUSSEAU 

from others what he deprives himself of; in the latter, 
he gives them nothing. Thus his social debt remains 
altogether undischarged, until he pays it with what is 
his own. 'But my father earned it, as an equivalent 
for services rendered to society' (you will say). 
Granted; he paid his debt, but not yours. You owe 
more to others than if you had been born penniless, 
because you were born favored. It is not just that 
what one man has done for society should relieve 
another from the debt which he owes it; for every one, 
owing his entire self to it, can pay only for himself, 
and no father can bequeath to his son the right to be 
useless to his fellows ; and yet this is what, according 
to you, he does by bequeathing to him his wealth, 
which is the proof and price of his labor. He who 
eats in idleness what he has not himself earned, steals 
it; and a bondholder, whom the state pays for doing 
nothing, hardly differs, in my eyes, from a highway 
robber who lives at the expense of travellers." This 
specious nonsense, which contains the germs of the 
worst forms of socialism, derives its entire force from 
the fact that Rousseau, while granting a continuous 
personality to society, denies it to the family. But, 
surely, if society has a right to bequeath to future 
generations what it obtains through an exchange, the 
family, when it is the other party to the transaction, 
cannot be denied the same right. Such transmission 
does not remove wealth from society, and the mere 
possession of wealth, whether earned or inherited, 
has nothing whatever to do with a man's duty to 
serve society. The idler is a rotten and burdensome 
branch of the social tree, whether he be a penniless 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 149 

tramp or a landed millionaire! But socialism is hos- 
tile to the family. 

Rousseau poured contempt upon the accumulated 
treasures of human experience, and upon all the 
means whereby they are made available to individual 
minds — books, study, schools, colleges, universities, 
social intercourse. Havkig himself very little know- 
ledge and very little power of continuous thinking, he 
could not conceive that other men should desire to be 
unlike him. He despised "high thinking," and all 
attempts, through sustained inquiry and rigorous 
thought, to make the world rational, and to determine 
the place and destiny of man, as a rational being, in it. 
In the place of such thought, which is essentially uni- 
versal and, therefore, social, he put vague sentiment 
and emotional intuition, which, like mystic experi- 
ences, depending upon temperament, are individual 
and unsocial. " Since our errors come from our judg- 
ments," he says, "it is clear that, if we never had to 
judge, we should never have to learn, and never be lia- 
ble to deceive ourselves. We should be happier in our 
ignorance than we can be in our knowledge. Who de- 
nies that scholars know a thousand true things which 
the ignorant will never know? Are the scholars, there- 
fore, nearer the truth? On the contrary, they get 
further from it as they go on, because, since the vanity 
of judging makes more progress than light does, every 
truth they learn is sure to come with a hundred false 
judgments. It is clear as daylight that the learned 
societies of Europe are merely public schools of lies ; 
and it is very certain that there are more errors in 
the Academy of Sciences than among the whole Huron 



150 ROUSSEAU 

race.^ Since the more men know, the more they 
deceive themselves, the only way to avoid error is 
ignorance. Do not judge, and you will never be 
duped. This is the lesson of Nature as well as of 
Reason. Apart from a very small number of very 
sensible relations between things and ourselves, we 
have naturally a profound indifference for all the rest. 
A savage would not turn his foot to see the working 
of the finest machine or all the prodigies of electricity. 
What does it matter to me? is the phrase most familiar 
to the ignorant, and most suitable to the wise." 
Though, in spite of this, Rousseau admits that men, 
when forced out of the savage state, must judge, ^ he, 
nevertheless, continually speaks of science, learning, 
and all that depends upon them, as degradations and 
necessary evils. In this way he favored obscurantism 
and superstition. 

But alongside such evil teachings, Rousseau had 
others which were of a different nature. His attacks 
upon luxury, display, and the vain waste of wealth, 
and his eloquent praises of plain, simple, modest liv- 
ing, have laid humanity forever under deep obligations 
to him. Here the fervid, passion-tipped arrows of 
his rhetoric, which on other occasions turned men 
into anarchic fanatics, roused them from their dull, 
inertly blind lethargy, the inheritance from centuries 
of use and wont, and made millions of them, who had 

1 These judgments show what good reason Rousseau had to speak 
of the " vanity of judging," and to praise ignorance. 

2 It is needless to say that even the lowest savage, in so far as 
he is conscious, judges; for consciousness, which even the brutes 
possess, is nothing more or less than a complex of judgments. To 
be aware of a feeling is to make a judgment, or several. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 151 

been crouching before, and struggling after, wealth 
and conventional position, see that under their very 
hands and eyes were all the treasures of Nature, and 
the possibilities of a life which made these things 
seem contemptible. When, a century later, Emerson 
said, " Give me health and a day, and I will make the 
pomp of emperors ridiculous," he had been to school 
to Eousseau.^ 

According to Rousseau's plan, the three or four 
years of boyhood are to be passed in physical exer- 
cises, in learning a few necessary facts in regard to 
the physical world, and a few simple processes called 
the natural arts, and in drawing a few simple conclu- 
sions from such facts and processes. He says: "If I 
have made myself understood thus far, it will be 
readily imagined how, along with the habits of bodily 
exercise and manual training, I insensibly ^ impart to 
my pupil a taste for reflection and meditation, to 
counterbalance the sloth which would result from his 
indifference to men's judgments and from the calm 
of the passions. He must toil like a peasant and 
think like a philosopher, in order not to be as indo- 
lent as a savage. The great secret of education is to 
make bodily and mental exercises always serve as 
recreations from each other." 

Looking back upon the progress made in this period, 
Rousseau says: "At first our pupil had only sensa- 

1 Indeed, as might easily be shown in detail, Emerson is, in the 
main, an American (moral) Rousseau, just as Wordsworth is an 
English one. " Good-bye, proud world, I'm going home," might 
have been written by Rousseau. 

2 So insensibly, indeed, that the reader fails to observe how, or 
that, it is done. 



152 ROUSSEAU 

tions; now he has ideas. ^ At first he only felt; now 
he judges.^ For from the comparison of several suc- 
cessive or simultaneous sensations, and from the judg- 
ment pronounced on them, arises a sort of mixed or 
complex sensation which I call idea." ^ " The manner 
of forming ideas," he continues, "is what imparts 
character to the human mind," and he gives a long 
list of mental characteristics arising from diiferent 
ways of doing so. Then follows a passage so charac- 
teristic that it must be quoted. "Simple ideas are 
but compared sensations. There are judgments in the 
simple sensations, as well as in the complex sensations 
which I call ideas. In sensation the judgment is 
purely passive; it affirms^ that what is felt is felt. 
In the perception, or idea, the judgment is active; it 
brings together, it compares, it determines ^ relations 
which the sense does not determine. This is all the 
difference; but it is great. Nature never deceives us; 
it is we^ that deceive ourselves." It seems plain 
that, if the last statement is true, and self-deception 
is a vice, we are innately vicious. 

But to return to £mile : he " has few acquirements 
in the way of knowledge ; but those he has are truly 
his own: he knows nothing by halves. In the small 
number of things which he knows, and knows well, 

1 As if there were such things as simple sensations ! 

2 As if he could feel without judging! 

8 Judgment, it seems, is a chemical action among sensa- 
tions. 

* Surely affirmation is an act, not a passion (jrdtfos). 

5 By what means can it do this ? 

6 If we are so completely opposed to Nature, what reason can 
there be for educating us according to Nature? 



EOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 153 

tlie most important is, that there are many which he 
does not know, but which he may know some time; 
many more which other men know, but which he will 
never know all his life, and an infinity of others which 
no man will ever know."^ . . . "Emile has only 
natural and purely physical knowledge. He does not 
know even the name of history, or the meaning of 
metaphysics or morals. He knows the essential rela- 
tions of men to things, but none of the moral relations 
of man to man. He knows little about how to gener- 
alize ideas, or to make abstractions.^ He sees quali- 
ties common to certain bodies, without reasoning 
about these qualities themselves. He knows abstract 
extension by the help of geometrical figures, and ab- 
stract quantity by means of algebraic signs.* These 
figures and signs are the support of those abstractions 
upon which his senses rest. He does not try to know 
things through their nature, but only through the 
relations which interest him. He estimates what is 
foreign to him only by its relation to himself; but 
this estimation is accurate and certain. Fancy and 
convention play no part in it. He lays most stress 
upon what is most useful to him, and, never depart- 
ing from this way of estimating, he sets no store by 
opinion. Emile is laborious, temperate, patient, 
firm, courageous.* His imagination, not having been 

1 That he, or anybody else, could arrive at such knowledge as 
this is a miracle surely. 

2 Rousseau does not see that every idea, whether simple or com- 
plex, involves both generalization and abstraction. 

3 It is certain that he would never know either by any such 
means. 

4 We find an exhibition of these virtues on p. 142. 



154 ROUSSEAU 

fired in any way,^ never magnifies dangers for him. 
He is sensible to few evils, and he can suffer with 
firmness,^ because he has not learnt to wrangle with 
fate." ... "In a word, Emile has all the virtues 
that relate to himself. In order to have also the social 
virtues, he merely requires to have the relations which 
call for them, and the light which his mind is now 
completely ready to receive. He thinks of himself 
without regard to others, and is content that others 
should not think of him. He asks nothing of any- 
body, and does not feel that he owes anything to 
anybody. He is also alone in human society, and 
relies only on himself.^ As much as any one, he has 
a right to do this ; for he is all that one can be at his 
age.* He has no errors, or only such as are inevitable. 
He has no vices, or only those against which no man 
is safe.^ His body is healthy; his limbs agile; he is 
fair-minded and unprejudiced, heart-free and passion- 
less. Self-love even, the first and most natural of all 
the passions, has hardly yet begun to stir. Without 



1 Robinson Crusoe seems to have proved somewhat firing. 
See p. 143. 

2 See above, p. 142. 

3 For what? we may ask. For his food and clothing? For 
the roof over his head ? For self-guidance ? If so, his tutor may 
vanish. 

4 This is certainly verj"- wide of the truth. 

5 We have to take Rousseau's word for this. He has furnished 
us no proof for it. A boy of fifteen or sixteen, with no human rela- 
tions but those of a puppet worked by the hidden wires of a magi- 
cian tutor, cannot be said to have either virtues or vices. His will 
having never been called into exercise, he is altogether in a sub- 
moral condition, knowing neither good nor evil. At best, he is a 
well-trained animal. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 155 

disquieting any one, he has lived contented, happy, 
so far as Nature has allowed. " ^ 

Such is Emile, at the age of puberty, an altogether 
fantastic and impossible creature, a human automa- 
ton, neither man nor beast, utterly unloving and 
unlovable. Instead of being richly and plastically 
moulded by the manifold influences of society, he has 
been cast in a rigid, beggarly mould, by one man's cold 
caprice, calling itself natural necessity. 

1 No, as far as Rousseau's utterly false views of Nature have 
allowed. In fact, Emile has all the time been caged, watched, and 
trained in ignorance into complete artificiality. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 

Adolescence 
(^mi7e, Bk. IV.) 

A warmth within the breast would melt 
The freezing reason's colder part, 
And, like a man in wrath, the heart 

Stood up and answer'd, " I have felt." 

Tennyson, In Memoriam, cxxiv. 

In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Gresk, my 
accomplishments, and my money stead me nothing ; but as 
much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will 
against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degra- 
dation of beating him by my superiority of strength. 

Emerson. 

It is the misfortune of all those people who 
despise or undervalue patient research, and careful 
reasoning from the same, that, when they undertake 
to write, they are forced to substitute for the true ar- 
rangements of science, specious schemes drawn from 
their own undisciplined imaginations. It was owing 
to such a misfortune that Rousseau was led to adopt 
the neat and pretty formula that, before the age of 
puberty the human being, having no sympathetic 
imagination, is guided entirely by selfish or egoistic 
instincts, and that only after that, and through the 

156 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 157 

physical and emotional changes consequent upon it, 
he begins to manifest social instincts. These, he 
thinks, are awakened by the imagination, and the 
imagination, which enables us to go beyond ourselves 
and identify ourselves with others, springs up with 
"the sexual instinct. That Eousseau should favor 
this view, is intelligible enough. So portentous and 
all-pervasive was the part played by the sexual pas- 
sion in his own life, that it may fairly be said to have 
extended to every human relation which had any 
attraction for him. A relation without something of 
this meant nothing to him. This is the secret of his 
aversion to society, whose nobler relations have noth- 
ing to do with sexuality. And the theory itself is 
obtrusively untrue. Not only " is man by nature a 
political animal," but almost from the dawn of con- 
sciousness the child shows social sympathies, and 
gives evidence of lively imaginations. Very small 
children love their brothers, sisters, and jilaymates, 
and grieve when separated from them. Their attach- 
ment to their mothers and nurses is often deep and 
genuine.^ Nor only so; but they learn quite early to 
understand social relations and to make moral distinc- 
tions. The latter may not always be correct; but that 
has nothing to do with the matter. Many children, 
at five or six, have very tender consciences, and are 
inconsolable when they think that they have done 
wrong, though they have no punishment to fear.^ 

1 1 knew a child of four who cried bitterly, because some one had 
said that his nurse, a very plain, almost grotesque, old woman, was 
not handsome. 

2 Rousseau, speaking of himself at the age of seven, says: "I 
had no idea of things, though all the feelings were already known 



158 ROUSSEAU 

The chief aim of education during the period of 
adolescence is to " perfect reason by feeling." ^ When 
the sexual feelings have begun to stir, but, not having 
yet found, or concentrated themselves upon, their 
proper object, go out through imagination to all sen- 
tient beings indiscriminately, the time has come for' 
the development and training of the social emotions,^ 
— friendship, compassion, sympathy, etc. In the 
first place, every care is to be taken lest the sexual 
feelings should at once find their proper object, and, 
through imagination, concentrate themselves upon it, 
and Rousseau has some sensible remarks upon the way 
to prevent this. If they should at once find their 
object, the growing youth will, in all likelihood, 
become a selfish sensualist, cruel, thoughtless, and 
brutal, and never develop the social emotions at all.^ 
If they do not, there will be an abundant overflow of 
warm friendliness. "A young man reared in sim- 
plicity is carried by the first movements of Nature 



to me. I had conceived nothing; I had felt everything, and the 
imaginary niit^fortmies of my heroes drew from me a hundred 
times more tears in my childhood than even my own have ever 
made me shed." Confessions, Bk. I. Surely there is no lack of 
sympathy or imagination here ! 

1 This completely inverts the order of fact. Feeling is primitive ; 
reason merely makes distinctions in feeling. The world itself is 
only a complex of feelings distinguished and analyzed by reason, 
itself inherent in feeling. 

2 Emotion is that residue of primitive desiderant feeling (pleasure 
and pain) which has not been differentiated by perceptive or active 
organs, but which naturally connects itself with the feelings par- 
ticularized by these, after they are formed. 

3 This was precisely Rousseau's own case. Here he could speak 
from bitter experience ; and the sinner is by no means the worst 
preacher against sin. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 159 

toward tender and affectionate passions. His com- 
passionate heart is moved by the sufferings of his 
kind; he starts with delight when his comrade comes 
back to him; his arms are able to find caressing em- 
braces, his eyes to shed tears of tender emotion; he 
feels shame when he incurs displeasure, and regret 
when he causes offence. If the heat of his burning 
blood makes him quick, impatient, angry, the next 
moment all the goodness of his heart returns in the 
effusiveness of his repentance. He weeps, he sobs 
over the wound he has caused; with his own blood he 
would be glad to redeem that which he has shed; all 
his anger dies out; all his pride is humbled before 
the feeling of his fault. If he is offended himself, at 
the height of his fury, an excuse, a word, disarms 
him ; he forgives the wrongs done him by others with 
the same good heart with which he repairs those he 
does to others." In an age when gush, embracing, 
weeping, and fainting were fashionable,^ such a youth, 
no doubt, seemed in the highest degree admirable : he 
would hardly be the ideal of to-day among men of 
Germanic blood. 

Rousseau sums up " the whole of human wisdom in 
the use of the passions " in two rules : (1) to feel the 
true relations of man, both in the species and in the 
individual; (2) to order all the affections of the soul 
in accordance with these relations. Only by follow- 



1 Hume, who had no superfluity of emotion, speaking of a scene 
with Rousseau, writes: " I assure you I kissed him and emhraced 
him twenty times, with a plentiful effusion of tears. I think no 
scene of my life was ever more affecting." Burton, Life of Hume, 
II., 315. 



160 EOUSSEAU 

ing these does man become moral. With a view to 
this Rousseau lays clown three maxims, viz., — 

(1) It is not in the power of the human heart to 
put itself in the place of those who are happier than 
we, but only of those who are more to be pitied. 

(2) We pity in others only the sufferings from 
which we do not think ourselves safe. 

(3) The pity Avhich we feel for others' ills is not 
measured by the amount of those ills, but by what we 
suppose they suffer from them. 

It might easily be shown that these maxims are 
untrue; but they are used by Rousseau to justify him 
in directing his pupil's newly awakened social sym- 
pathies to the sufferings, rather than to the joys, of 
humanity — to the poor and oppressed, rather than to 
the rich and overweening. And this furnishes hira 
an opportunity, of which he makes masterly use, to 
compare the world of wealth and fashion with the 
world of poverty and simplicity — greatly to the ad- 
vantage of the latter. He concludes that Emile must 
be removed from cities, where fashion, immodesty, 
and luxury contribute to sexu.al precocity and corrup- 
tion, and taken to the country, to develop slowly in 
simplicity. Here he is still to be caged, guarded, 
and duped. If, in spite of all precautions, the pas- 
sions prove incontroUable, he is to be taken to a hos- 
pital and shown the physical effects of unbridled lust 
in their worst form. At the same time every effort 
must be made to direct the young man's affections 
into broader and more peaceful channels. His tutor, 
hitherto so rigid, representing necessity, must now 
become his intimate friend, and strive to call out his 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 161 

affection for both himself and others. Under his 
guidance, Emile "must study society through men, 
and men through society," beginning with the study 
of the human heart. In this process, he will be able 
to distinguish between "the real and indestructible 
equality " due to Nature, and the chimerical and vain 
equality found in society, in which "the many are 
always sacrificed to the few, and public interests to 
private, and the specious names of justice and subor- 
dination always serve as instruments of violence and 
weapons of iniquity." But, in order that such study 
may not render him misanthropic and pessimistic, he 
must use other experiences besides his own, and be 
made acquainted with worthy people. His surround- 
ings must be such that "he shall think well of those 
who live with him, and become so well acquainted 
with the world as to think everything that is done in 
it bad." " Let him know," says Rousseau, "that man 
is naturally good; let him feel it; let him judge his 
neighbor by himself; but let him see how society 
depraves and perverts men; let him find in their 
prejudices the source of all their vices; let him be 
brought to esteem each individual; but let him de- 
spise the multitude; let him see that all men wear 
pretty nearly the same mask; but let him also know 
that there are faces fairer than the masks that cover 
them." His personal experience may be widened and 
corrected by the study of history,^ and especially of 

1 Much of what Rousseau says on the subject of history and the 
study of it is truly admirable, and deserves the most careful con- 
sideration on the part of educators. His estimate of Herodotus, 
Thucydides, Xenophon, Cffisar, Livy, Tacitus, etc., is entirely 
correct. 



162 ROUSSEAU 

ancient history, which is simpler and truer than 
modern, as well as by the reading of well- written 
biographies, such as those of the inimitable Plutarch. 
But, after all, the best and most effective way of guid- 
ing the affections of a young man, and of making him 
acquainted with men, is to engage him in active 
benevolence. Kindly sentiments and noble words, 
which children learn at school, are impotent, compared 
with the experience that comes of kindly acts. "Di- 
rect your pupil," says Rousseau, "to all good actions 
that are possible for him; let the interest of the poor 
be always his interest; let him aid them, not only 
with his purse, but with his care ; let him serve them, 
protect them, and devote his time to them; let him 
become their agent; he will never again, in all his 
life, fill so noble a place." Without troubling him- 
self about the epithets which the public may apply to 
him, "he will do whatever he knows to be useful and 
good." . . . " He knows that his first duty is toward 
himself, that young people must be diffident, circum- 
spect in their behavior, respectful to their elders, reti- 
cent and discreet in talking without occasion, modest 
in things indifferent, but bold in well-doing, and cour- 
ageous in speaking the truth." ^ "To prevent pity 
from degenerating into weakness, it must be gener- 
alized and extended to the whole human race. Then 
we yield to it only in so far as it is in accord with 
justice, because, of all the virtues, justice is the one 

1 By what process the animal, self-centred 6mile of sixteen be- 
comes the bold philanthroi)ist of eighteen, Rousseau says he is not 
bound to tell us, and we never find out ; but tlie new l^mile, if he 
could be made a reality, is certainly a most admirable creature, 
and deserves all the encomiums of his maker. 



KOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 163 

that contributes most to universal human well-being. 
Both from reason, and for our own sake, we must 
have pity on our race still more than on our neighbor; 
and it is a great cruelty toward men to have pity upon 
the wicked." In this way Emile acquires the two 
great virtues of humanity and justice.^ Both are 
generalized pity. 

Rousseau feels that his new ideal may seem impos- 
sible or fantastic to most people, who will say to him : 
" Nothing of what you suppose exists : young people 
are not made that way ; they have such and such pas- 
sions; they do this and that." To such he replies: 
" Just as if one were to deny that a pear-tree is ever 
a large tree, because we see only dwarfs in our 
gardens ! " 

There is still one more influence which may now be 
brought to bear, to calm the passions and give them 
beneficent direction, and that is Religion. Of this 
great subject no mention has thus far been made; it 
has played no part in Emile's early education. In 
recommending its introduction at the present stage, 
Rousseau gives his reasons for excluding it before. 
The most cogent of these is, that it could not with any 
effect have been introduced earlier, because the con- 
cepts with which it deals are unintelligible to the 
child. He blames Locke for maintaining that spirits 
should be studied before bodies, and declares that 
"this is the method of superstition," and "only serves 

1 Of course, this justice always remains an individual and sub- 
jective thing, a mere principle of knight-errantry, and cannot do 
otherwise, until it is embodied in a State capable of giving it uni- 
versal effect. Plato showed this in his Republic; but Rousseau 
bated states. 



164 ROUSSEAU 

to establish materialism," since, in trying to think 
spirits, children think only bodies, ghosts. " A spirit 
means but a body both to the common people and to 
children." . . . "Every child who believes in God 
is, therefore, necessarily, an idolater, or, at least, an 
anthropomorphist ; and, when once the imagination 
has seen God, the understanding rarely conceives 
him." And, even if we could impart to the child the 
notions current in philosophy, and could make him 
think a single substance, combining in itself the in- 
compatible attributes of extension and thought,^ we 
should not be much nearer the mark, or reach any 
comprehension of the theological " ideas of crea.tion, 
annihilation, ubiquity, eternity, omnipotence, and 
those of the divine attributes." But not only are the 
conceptions of religion beyond the reach of a child; 
many of its teachings are apt to lead to the most fatal 
results. " We tmist believe in God in order to be saved. 
This dogma, wrongly understood, is the principle of 
bloody intolerance, and the cause of all those vain 
teachings which aim a mortal blow at human reason, 
by accustoming it to satisfy itself with words. To 
be sure, there is not a moment to be lost when eternal 
salvation is to be won; but, if it can be obtained by 
the mere repetition of certain words, I do not see 
what hinders us from peopling heaven with jackdaws 
and magpies, as well as with children." . . . "What 
does the child, who professes the Christian religion, 

1 Here Rousseau shows some slight knowledge of the philosophies 
of Descartes and Spinoza, who held extension and thought to be 
incompatible. This is so far from being true that extension apart 
from thought is utterly inconceivable, as is also duration. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 165 

believe? What he conceives; and he conceives so 
little of what you say to him that, if you tell him the 
contrary, he will adopt it with equal readiness. The 
faith of children and many men is an affair of geog- 
raphy. Are they to be rewarded for being born in 
Rome, rather than in Mecca?" . . . "When a child 
says he believes in God, it is not in God that he 
believes. He believes Tom or Dick, who tells him 
that there is something which is called God." Since 
a child cannot believe in God, he cannot be punished 
for not doing so. "Reason tells us that a man is 
punishable only for the sins of his will, and that in- 
vincible ignorance can never be imputed to him as a 
crime." "Opinion triumphs in the matter of relig- 
ion, more than in aught else. But, seeing that we 
set out to shake off its yoke in everything, and to 
allow no place for authority ... in what religion 
shall we rear Emile? To what sect shall we assign 
the man of Nature. The answer, it seems to me, is 
very simple. We shall assign him to no sect; but we 
shall put him in a position to select that which the 
best use of his reason may lead him to." 

Rousseau now undertakes to give an account of the 
religion of Nature or Reason; but, instead of this, 
really gives us his own beliefs, which sprang, not from 
Reason, but from tradition, sentiment, and desire. 
Moreover, instead of setting these forth in his own 
name, he puts them into the mouth of a humble and 
unfortunate Savoyard Vicar, whose traits are drawn 
from two men whom he had actually known. -^ 

1 See above, pp. 38, 40. 



166 KOUSSEAU 

The Savoyard Vicar's Confession of Faith, though 
it would now be considered a very harmless produc- 
tion, made a great noise at the time of its appearance, 
and brought down upon Rousseau the odium and per- 
secution of the whole religious world of France and 
Switzerland. It is nothing more or less than an 
attempt to prove what, some twenty years later, Kant, 
borrowing from Rousseau, called the three Postulates 
of the Pure Reason, — God, Freedom, and Immortality, 
— supposed to be the essentials of Natural Religion. 
Rousseau had been both a Catholic and a Protestant, 
had heard liis father tell about his experiences with 
the Moslems in Constantinople, and had listened to 
the negative teachings of Voltaire and the Encyclopse- 
dists. The result was that, while sectarianism, with 
its exclusive dogmas, lost all meaning and authority 
for him, he still wished to retain what, listening to 
his heart, he was fain to consider the essentials of 
religion, and did his best to prove them true. His 
proofs, however, have no validity. In so far as they 
can be called proofs at all, they are mainly drawn 
from the writings of Dr. Samuel Clarke (died in 1729) ; 
but, in reality, they are mere feelings and desires trans- 
lated into thoughts. The Vicar is made to say: "Im- 
penetrable mysteries surround us on all sides ; ^ they 
are above the sensible region; as a means of piercing 
them we think we have intelligence, and have only 
imagination. Through this imaginary world every 
one clears the path that seems good to him; no one 
can know whether his own leads to the goal. Never- 
theless, we try to penetrate and to know everything. 
1 The greatest mystery of all is, how any one can know this. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 167 

The only thing we do not know how to do, is to be 
ignorant of what we cannot know."^ . . . "The 
first result of these reflections was, that I learnt to 
limit my inquiries to what interested me immediately, 
to remain in profound ignorance of all the rest, and 
not even to take the trouble to doubt except about 
things which it was important for me to know."^ 
... " Moreover, I realized that the philosophers, so 
far from delivering me from my useless doubts, would 
only multiply those that tormented me, without set- 
tling any of them. I, therefore, took another guide, 
and said: 'Let us consult the inner light; ^ it will not 
lead me so far astray as they do; or, at least, my 
error will be my own, and I shall be less depraved 
by following my own illusions than by trusting to 
their lies.'" . . . "Imagine all your philosophers, 
ancient and modern, having first exhausted their gro- 
tesque systems of force, chance, fatality, necessity, 
animated world, living matter, and materialism of 
every sort, and, after them, the illustrious Clarke, 
explaining the world, proclaiming, at last, the Being 
of beings and the dispenser of things ; with what uni- 
versal admiration, with what unanimous applause 
would this system have been received — a system so 
grand, so consoling, so sublime, so calculated to uplift 

1 In these sentences we have the germs both of Kantian Criticism 
and of Huxleyan Agnosticism. 

2 Good ; hnt what is important for us to know? 

3 "They tell us," he says elsewhere, "that conscience is the 
result of prejudice ; yet I know,/roni my experience, that it insists 
upon following the order of Nature, in opposition to all the laws of 
men." Here we have complete subjectivism, individualism, and 
anarchism. 



168 ROUSSEAU 

the soul, to furnish a foundation for virtue, and, at 
the same time, so luminous, so simple, and, it seems 
to me, offering fewer things incomprehensible to the 
human mind than there are absurdities in any other 
system!" . . . "Having thus, within myself, the 
love of truth as my only philosophy, and, as my only 
method, an easy and simple rule, which relieves me 
from the vain subtlety of arguments, I resumed, in 
accordance with this rule, the examination of those 
parts of knowledge which interested me, being deter- 
mined to accept, as evident, all those to which, in 
the sincerity of my heart, I could not refuse my assent; 
as true all those that might seem to me to have a 
necessary connection ^ with the former, and to leave 
all the rest uncertain, without either rejecting or ac- 
cepting them, and without bothering myself to explain 
them, seeing that they lead to nothing useful in prac- 
tice." Proceeding on the lines of Descartes, Rous- 
seau comes to this: "I exist, and I have senses, 
through which I am affected.^ This is the first truth 
that strikes me, and to which I am forced to assent." 
It would be vain to waste time on these crudities. 
They are not due to any accurate thinking, or to any 
real, enlightened desire for the truth, but to an effort 
to justify a lazy, intellectual habit, in belialf of a fore- 
gone scheme of sensuous, unsocial life. If sectarian 
beliefs are a matter of geography, these emotional prej- 
udices are matters of both geography and individual 

1 It requires considerable philosophy to find out what is a neces- 
sary connection, and what " necessary " means. 

2 Yes; but what is the meaning of 'I,' 'exist,' 'senses,' 'affected'? 
To tell that requires a subtle philosophy. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 169 

temperament. Neither Rousseau's acquaintance, 
Helvetius, nor any Singhalese Buddhist would have 
found any difficulty in refusing assent to Rousseau's 
self-evident truths. He may well be spoken of as a 
mystic voluptuary, — 

" Quenching all wonder with omnipotence, 
Praising a name with indolent piety." i 

We are interested in his scheme only because it 
furnishes the method by which jfimile is to be led to 
religion, to that view of higher things supposed to be 
necessary for the direction of his passions and imagi- 
nation. "By developing the natural," says Rousseau, 
"we have been able to control his nascent sensibility; 
by cultivating the reason, we have regulated it. In- 
tellectual objects moderated the expression of sensible 
objects. By rising to the principle of things, we have 
withdrawn him from the dominion of the senses. It 
was a simple matter to rise from the study of Nature 
to the search for its author." 

The recently unimaginative, unreflective ^mile, 
being thus daily sentimentalized, will be very unlike 
other youths. "You always imagine him," says 
Rousseau, "like your young men, always heedless, 
always petulant, flighty, wandering from fete to fete, 
from amusement to amusement, without being able to 
adhere to anything. You will laugh to see me make 
a contemplative being, a philosopher,^ a true theolo- 
gian, out of an ardent, quick, high-tempered, high- 
spirited young man, at the most ebullient time of his 

1 George Eliot, Spanish Gypsy, Bk. I. 

2 If he had submitted to this indignity, Roussean would have 
disowned him. 



170 KOUSSEAU 

life.". . . *'I, comparing my pupil with yours, find 
that they can hardly have anything in common." . . . 
"Yours think they escape from childhood only by 
shaking off all sort of yoke; they then make up for 
the long constraint to which they have been subjected, 
as a prisoner does, who, when delivered from his 
fetters, puts forth, shakes, and bends his limbs. 
Emile, on the contrary, is proud to become a man, 
and to submit to the yoke of nascent reason. His 
body, already formed, has no need of the old move- 
ments, and begins to stop of itself, whilst his mind, 
half-developed, now, in turn, seeks to soar. Thus, 
while the age of reason is, for the former, the age of 
license, it becomes for the latter the age of reasoning." 
But, in spite of all efforts to drain off into side 
channels the rising tide of sexual instinct, the time at 
last comes when this can no longer be done. " From 
this moment," says Rousseau, your ward, "though 
still your disciple, is no longer your pupil. He is 
your friend; he is a man. Treat liim henceforth as 
such." . . . "Hitherto you have got nothing from 
him except by force or wiles : authority and the law 
of duty were unknown to him ; he had to be forced or 
duped, before he would obey you." . . . "In order to 
guide an adult, you must do the very opposite of all 
that you have done in order to guide a child." In 
accordance with this, Emile is now to be informed of 
all that has been hitherto concealed from him — the 
purpose and method of his past education, the dupery 
that has been practised on him, the course he has to 
pursue in the future, and the perils that await him, 
especially those arising from his own passions. In 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 171 

regard to these he is now to receive clear aud earnest 
instruction. To protect him from passion-suggested 
imaginings, he is to be withdrawn from all lonely, 
sedentary, lazy occupations, as well as from the so- 
ciety of women and young men, and made to engage 
in vigorous pursuits, such as hunting, which will not 
only occupy his mind, but tire out his body. At the 
same time the sexual relation is, in various ways, to 
be surrounded with a halo of sacramental awe, as the 
portal to supreme bliss. "Thereupon," says Rous- 
seau, " I will call the Eternal Being, whose work he 
is, to attest the truth of my words ; I will make him 
judge between Emile and me; I will mark the place 
where we are, the rocks, the woods, the mountains 
that surround us, as monuments of his pledges and 
mine. I will throw into my eyes, my voice, my gest- 
ures, the enthusiasm and the ardor with which I 
wish to inspire him. Then I shall speak, and he will 
listen to me. I shall melt, and he will be moved. 
By thus suffusing myself with the sanctity of my 
duties, I shall render his more worthy of respect; I 
shall strengthen and animate my reasoning with 
images and figures; I shall not be prolix and diffuse 
in cold maxims, but abounding in overflowing feel- 
ings ; my reason will be grave and sententious ; but 
my heart will never have said enough. Then, in 
showing him all that I have done for him,^ I shall 
show him that I have done it for myself : he will see 
in my tender affection the reason of all my care. 
What surprise, what agitation I shall cause him, by 

1 The tutor, it must be remembered, gives his services gratui- 
tously. 



172 ROUSSEAU 

this sudden change of language ! Instead of belittling 
his soul by continually talking to him about his own 
interests, I shall henceforth talk to him of mine, and 
I shall touch him more deeply. I shall inflame his 
young heart with all the feelings of friendship, gen- 
erosity, and gratitude which I have already called 
forth, and which are so sweet to nourish. I shall 
press him to my bosom, shedding over him tears of 
tenderness : I shall say to him : ' You are my property, 
my child, my work; from your happiness I expect 
mine: if you frustrate my hopes, you steal twenty 
years of my life, and you cause the unhappiness of 
my declining years.' It is in this way that one can 
make a young man listen to him, and engrave on the 
bottom of his heart the remembrance of what one says 
to him." 

Alas for iSmile, if he can be caught by any such 
lachrymose discharge as this ! It is needless to say 
that it is at once ungenerous and immoral, as all at- 
tempt to guide a human being by any other motive 
than moral insight always is. If ifimile were properly 
educated, he would repel all such suggestions with 
scornful indignation, or, if he had any sense of humor, 
with pitying laughter. Instead of this, he is made 
to reply: "0 my friend, my protector, my master! 
resume the authority which you proposed to lay down 
at the moment when it was most necessary that you 
should retain it. Thus far you have possessed it 
only through my weakness ; now you shall possess it 
through my will; and it will be all the more sacred 
to me for that reason. Defend me from all the ene- 
mies that assail me, and especially from those that I 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 173 

carry within myself, and that betray me. Watch 
over your work, that it may remain worthy of you. 
I wish to obey your laws ; I wish it always : it is my 
constant will. If ever I disobey you, it will be in 
spite of myself. Make me free, by protecting me 
against my passions, which do me violence; save me 
from being their slave, and compel me to be my own 
master, by obeying, not my senses, but my reason." 

Emile, having thus, like a coward, voluntarily re- 
nounced his moral autonomy, for the sake of being 
protected from himself, reverts once more to automa- 
tism. "To be sure," says Rousseau, "I leave him 
the semblance of independence ; but his subjection to 
me is more complete than ever, because he wishes it 
to be so. So long as I could not make myself master 
of his will, I remained master of his body. Kow I 
sometimes leave him to himself, because I always 
govern him. When I leave him, I embrace him, and 
say in a confident tone: 'Emile, I entrust you to my 
friend; I commit you to his upright heart: he will 
be responsible to me for you. ' " On the very next 
page, however, he says : " Do not leave him alone day 
or night; sleep, at the very least, in his room. See 
that he does not go to bed until he is overcome with 
sleep, and that he gets up as soon as he awakes." In 
this state of complete tutelage, his imagination is to 
be filled with fairy-tales of his future spouse, and 
glowing descriptions of the idyllic life of love ^ that 

1 Here is Rousseau's notion of love: " What is true love itself 
but chimera, lie, illusion ? We love far more the image which we 
form than the object to which we apply it. If we saw the object of 
our love exactly as it is, there would be no more love in the world." 



174 ROUSSEAU 

is in store for him and her. Such fanciful pictures 
will destroy in him all taste for real women, until he 
can be induced to believe that he has met one corre- 
sponding to his chimera. In order that he may do 
this, he is now, for the first time, to be introduced 
into society; and Rousseau draws a vivid contrast 
between him, in his noble, savage simplicity and ab- 
sence of self-consciousness, and the ordinary youth of 
his time, with his vanity and veneer of politeness. 
In this connection he quotes, from his friend Duclos, 
a few sentences which may here be transcribed: — 

" The most unfortunate effect of ordinary politeness 
is, that it teaches the art of dispensing with the 
virtues which it imitates. Let education inspire us 
with humanity and kindliness, and we shall either 
have politeness, or else no need for it. 

"If we have not that politeness which is marked 
by the graces, we shall have that which marks the 
upright man and the citizen; we shall not need to 
have recourse to falseness. 

"Instead of being artificial in order to please, it 
will be enough to be kind: instead of being false, in 
order to flatter others, it will be enough to be indulgent. 

"Those with whom we stand in such relations will 
be neither puffed up with pride nor corrupted. They 
will only be grateful and become better." 

Emile, thrown into society, will — one does not see 
how — find himself completely at home in it, and will 
at once earn respect and confidence, although he have 
no brilliant qualities. In studying men, "he will 
often have occasion to reflect on what flatters or 
shocks the human heart, and so he will find himself 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 175 

philosophizing on the principles of taste — a study- 
suitable for this stage in his career." Eousseau's 
aesthetic theory is delightfully simple : " The further 
we go in search of definitions of taste," he says, "the 
further we go astray. Taste is simply the faculty of 
judging what pleases or displeases the greater num- 
ber." Taste depends, at bottom, on innate sensibility; 
but three conditions are necessary for its cultivation. 
" First, one must live in numerous societies in order 
to make many comparisons. Second, there must be 
societies devoted to amusement and indolence; for in 
societies devoted to business the rule is not pleasure, 
but interest. Tliird, there must be societies in which 
the inequality of conditions is not too great, and in 
which pleasure, rather than vanity, prevails. Where 
this is not the case, fashion stifles taste, and people 
seek no longer what pleases, but what distinguishes." 
In seeking to cultivate his taste, that is, the art 
of pleasing, Emile will look to Nature, rather than to 
Culture. "There is at present no civilized place in 
the world where the general taste is worse than in 
Paris." . . . "Those who guide us are the artists, 
the great, the rich; and what guides them is their in- 
terest or their vanity. The rich, in order to display 
their riches, and the others, in order to profit thereby, 
vie with one another in seeking out new means of ex- 
pense. In this way excessive luxury establishes its 
empire, and makes people love what is difficult and 
costly. Then the pretended beautiful, far from imi- 
tating Nature, is beautiful only because it thwarts 
Nature. This is why luxury and bad taste are insepa- 
rable. Wherever taste is expensive, it is false." 



176 KOUSSEAU 

But "it is chiefly in the intercourse between the 
two sexes that taste, good or bad, is formed." . . . 
"Consult woman's taste in physical things, things 
dependent on the judgment of the senses, men's in 
things moral, dependent on the judgment of the un- 
derstanding." ... " Inasmuch as it is necessary to 
please men, in order to serve them ; and the art of 
writing is anything but a useless study, when it is 
employed to make them listen to the truth," ^fimile 
Avill now study the best literary models, and espe- 
cially the works of the ancients. " In eloquence, in 
poetry, and in every species of literature, as well as 
in history, he will find them abounding in things, and 
sober in judgment, wliereas our authors speak much 
and say little." In view of this, he will now learn 
Latin, Greek, and Italian. " Latin he must learn in 
order to know French well." . . . "These studies 
will now be amusements for him, and he will profit 
by them all the more that he is not forced to them." 
He will thus "go back to the sources of pure litera- 
ture," and learn to despise "the sewerage in the 
reservoirs of modern compilers, journals, translations, 
dictionaries; he will cast a glance at all that, and bid 
it good-bye forever." As to the babblings of acade- 
mies, they will merely be fun to him. "My principal 
object," says Rousseau, in conclusion, "in teaching 
him to feel and love the beautiful in all its forms, is 
to fix his affections and his tastes, to prevent his nat- 
ural appetites from degenerating, and himself from 
one day seeking in his riches the means of happiness 
which he ought to find nearer home." 

Having thus become acquainted with society, and 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 177 

learnt the art of pleasing, fimile is now, at last, in a 
position to look out for a wife in good earnest. 
"Therefore, good-bye, Paris, famous city, city of 
noise, smoke, and mud, where the women no longer 
believe in honor, nor the men in virtue ! Good-bye, 
Paris ! We are in quest of love, happiness, innocence. 
We shall never be far enough from you." 

Lest we should misunderstand the meaning of these 
last words, Eousseau has taken care, in the closing 
pages of this book, to give us his own ideal of life. 
It is simply that of an accomplished voluptuary, 
whose aim is to get as much real pleasure (voluptS 
r&elle) as possible out of life, and who, therefore, 
avoids everything that would entail envy, strife, and 
unpleasantness, all formalities that would cause 
tedium, and all excesses that would diminish the 
power of sensual enjoyment. He tells us, indeed, 
that he is here speaking "not of moral possessions, 
which relate to the dispositions of the soul, but to 
those of sensuality and real pleasure, in which preju- 
dice and opinion have no part." We know, however, 
through his Confessions and otherwise, that morality 
meant nothing to him but a careful calculation of the 
possibilities of undisturbed sensual enjoyment. We 
may fairly conclude, therefore, that the aim of Emile's 
education, thus far, has been to prepare him, not for 
a life of earnest, determined moral struggle and self- 
sacrifice, but for a life of quiet, cleanly, assured sen- 
suous delight; not for a life of active enterprise, but 
for a life of passive dalliance. 



CHAPTER IX 

ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 

Youth 

{l^mile, Bk. V.) 

Willst du genau erfahren was sich ziemt, 
So frage nur bei edeln Frauen an. 

Goethe. 

And manhood fused with female grace, 
In such a sort, the child would twine 
A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine. 

And find his comfort in thy face. 

Tennyson, In Memoriam, CIX. 

Love seeketli not its own. 

Paul. 

Rousseau's Emile is now a young man, whose 
chief purpose is to find a suitable wife, to complete his 
sensuous happiness. Rousseau, like all sensualists, 
has a low opinion of women. They live in their 
senses, and not in their understanding. While man 
must be active and strong, woman must be passive 
and weak. " The one must necessarily have will and 
power; it is enough if the other offer but little resist- 
ance." ... "It follows that woman is made to 
please man." ... "If woman is made to please 
man and to be subjugated, she must make herself 
agreeable to him, instead of provoking him: her 
violence lies in her charms." . . . "The minds of 

178 



KOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 179 

women correspond exactly to their constitution. Far 
from being ashamed of their weakness, they glory in 
it. Their tender muscles are without resistance, they 
pretend not to be able to lift the lightest burdens; 
they would be ashamed to be strong. Why? It is 
certainly not for the sake of seeming delicate ; it is 
from a far shrewder precaution : they are preparing, 
a long way beforehand, excuses for being weak, and 
the right to be so on occasions." . . . "Thus all the 
education of women must have relation to men. To 
please them, to be useful to them, to rear them when 
they are young, to tend them when they are grown, 
counsel and console them, to make their lives pleas- 
ant and sweet, — these are the duties of women in 
all times, and what they ought to learn from earliest 
childhood." , . . "Woman is a coquette b}^ profes- 
sion; but her coquetry changes form and object 
according to her views. Let us regulate these views 
by those of nature, and woman will have the educa- 
tion that befits her." She is different from man and 
has different functions; she must, therefore, receive a 
different education. Rousseau has much to say about 
these differences. They rest largely on the notion 
that command and independence belong to man; obe- 
dience and dependence upon woman. While he is to 
be taught to be strong, and defiant of public opinion, 
she must learn to be agreeable, and sensitive to such 
opinion. " Opinion is virtue's tomb among men, and 
its throne among women." At the same time, a girl's 
education must, in many respects, resemble that of a 
boy. She must at first have plenty of exercise and 
frolic. "All that confines and constrains Nature is 



180 ROUSSEAU 

in bad taste; this is as true of the decorations of 
the body as of those of the mind. Life, health, rea- 
son, well-being, must take precedence of everything. 
There is no grace without ease ; delicacy is not languor ; 
one need not be unhealthy in order to please." The 
amusements of a girl will be gentler than those of a 
boy, aiming at refinement rather than strength. In- 
stead of learning to read and write, as girls usually 
do, she will play with dolls, sew, embroider, make 
lace, and paint flowers, fruit, and such things, 
carefully avoiding figures and landscapes. A little 
arithmetic will not be out of place. " Girls must be 
wide-awake and laborious ; more than that, they must 
be early subjected to repression {gene). This misfort- 
une, if it is one for them, is inseparable from their 
sex; and they can free themselves from it only by 
exposing themselves to suffer others more cruel. All 
their lives they will be subjected to the most continu- 
ous and severe repression, that of propriety. From 
the first they must be exercised in constraint, so that 
it may never cost them anything; and taught to over- 
come all their fancies, in order to subject them to the 
will of others." They must be educated at home, 
under the eyes of their parents, and " never for one 
instant in their lives be allowed not to feel the bridle," 
"Accustom them to be interrupted in the midst of 
their games, and to be carried off to other occupations 
without a murmur." . . . "From this habitual con- 
straint there results a docility, which women have 
need of all their lives, since they never cease to be 
subjected either to a man or to the judgments of men, 
without their ever being allowed to set themselves 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 181 

above these judgments. The first and most important 
attribute of a woman is sweetness. Being made to 
obey an imperfect being like man, often so full of 
vices, and always so full of faults, she must early learn 
to submit even to injustice, and to bear the misdeeds 
of a husband without complaining." . . . "She must 
never scold." Her weapon of defence is cleverness 
or address. If she were not artful, she would be 
man's slave. She must, therefore, cultivate artful- 
ness. *' Let us not destroy the instruments of happi- 
ness, because the wicked use them for mischief." 
A girl is to cultivate taste, but to be simple in her 
adornments. Setting fashion at defiance, she will 
consider only what is becoming to her, what makes 
her pleasing. She must not try to be a mediaeval 
saint, knowing only the command Ora et Idbora, nor 
"live like a grandmother. She must be lively, 
hearty, merry; she must sing and dance to her heart's 
content, and enjoy all the innocent pleasures of her 
years." Her singing must not be of the professional 
sort, but simple and natural; and she may learn to 
play her own accompaniments "without being able to 
read a single note." Since "the talent for conversa- 
tion takes the first place in the art of pleasing," she 
must early acquire it. "While a man speaks what 
he knows, a woman speaks what pleases. In order 
to talk, the one requires knowledge, the other taste; 
the object of the one should be useful things, that 
of the other, agreeable things." . . . "We ought 
not, therefore, to stop the chatter of girls, as we 
would do that of boys, by the question : What is the 
use of that ? but with this one, which is not more 



182 ROUSSEAU 

easy to answer : What effect will that produce ? " 
. . . "They must make it a rule never to say 
anything but what is agreeable to those with 
whom they talk." At the same time, they must 
never lie. 

Religion ought to be taught earlier to girls than to 
boys, — the religion of their parents. "Since the 
conduct of woman is enslaved to public opinion, her 
belief is enslaved to authority. Every girl ought to 
follow the religion of her mother, and every wife that 
of her husband. If this religion be false, the docility 
which makes the mother and the daughter submit to 
the order of Nature wipes out, in God's sight, the sin 
of error. Being incapable of judging for themselves, 
they ought to accept the decision of their fathers and 
husbands, as that of the Church." . . . "Since 
authority must regulate the religion of women, it is of 
less importance to explain to them the grounds you 
have for believing than to set clearly before them 
what you do believe." . . . "When you explain 
articles of faith to them, let it be done in the form of 
direct instruction. In replying, they must say only 
what they think, not what has been dictated to them. 
All the answers in the catechism are preposterous : it 
is the scholar instructing the teacher. They are even 
lies in the mouths of children." In religious instruc- 
tion no notice should be taken of those dogmas which 
have no direct bearing on practice. " That a virgin 
is the mother of her Creator; that she gave birth to 
God, or merely to a man with whom God united him- 
self; that the Father and the Son have the same sub- 
stance, or only a similar one; that the Holy Spirit 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 183 

proceeds from one of the two who are the same, or 
from the two conjointly — I do not see that the de- 
cision of these questions, in appearance essential, is 
of any more importance to the human race than to 
know on what day of the moon Easter ouglit to be 
celebrated, whether we ought to say the rosary, fast, 
eat fish and eggs, speak Latin or French in church, 
adorn the walls with images, say or listen to mass; 
and have no wife of one's own. Let everybody think 
about these things as he pleases. I do not know how 
far they may interest other people; they do not inter- 
est me at all. But what interests me, and others like 
me, is, that every one should know that there exists 
an arbiter of the lot of men, whose children we all 
are, who orders us all to be just, to love one another, 
to be kindly and merciful, to keep our agreements 
with everybody, even with our enemies and his ; that 
the apparent happiness of this life is nothing; that 
after it there comes another, in which this Supreme 
Being will be the rewarder of the good and the judge 
of the wicked. These are the dogmas which it is 
important to teach young people, and to impress upon 
all citizens. Any one who contests them certainly 
deserves punishment; he is the disturber of order, and 
the enemy of society. Whoever goes beyond them, 
and seeks to subject us to his private opinions, comes 
to the same point by an opposite path : to establish 
order after his fashion, he disturbs the peace; in his 
forward pride he makes himself the interpreter of the 
Divinity; he demands, in his name, the homage and 
respect of men, and puts himself, as far as he can, in 
the place of God. He ought to be punished for sac- 



184 ROUSSEAU 

rilege, if not for intolerance."^ "Ignore, therefore," 
he continues, " all those mysterious dogmas which are 
for us words without ideas." , . . "Keep your chil- 
dren always within the narrow circle of tliose dogmas 
which relate to morality. Persuade them that there 
is nothing useful for us to know but what teaches us 
to do good. Do not make your daughters theologians 
or reasoners; . . . accustom them to feel themselves 
under the eyes of God, to take him as witness of all 
their actions and thoughts, of their virtue and pleas- 
ures ; to do good without ostentation, because he loves 
it; to suffer evil without a murmur, because he will 
one day make it up to them ; ^ finally, to be, during 
all the days of their life, what they would wish to 
have been, when they shall appear before him. This 
is the true religion; this is the only one that is liable 
to neither abuse, impiety, nor fanaticism. Let others 
preach sublimer ones as much as they please ; I know 
of none but this." 

But though, according to Rousseau, women are des- 
titute of reason, such as would enable them to discuss 
questions of theology and ethics, yet they have some- 
thing which takes its place. " There exists, for the 
whole human race, a rule anterior to opinion." . . . 
" It judges prejudice even ; and it is only in so far as 
the judgment of men agrees with it, that this judg- 

1 This somewhat lengthy quotation has been made with the view 
of bringing out three things : (1) Rousseau's religious views ; (2) his 
ethical sanctions, which are of a supernatural sort ; (3) his religious 
intolerance, which matches even that of Calvin, and reveals the 
unphilosophical fanatic. Cf. p. 215. 

2 In ethics Rousseau never rises above this other-worldly self- 
interest. Of nobility, as an end, he has no notion. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 185 

raent can be authoritative for us. This rule is the 
inner sentiment." It follows from this, that the 
moral guide of women is, after all, a subjective feel- 
ing. How treacherous this may be, when separated 
from reason, hardly needs to be remarked. It must 
be admitted, however, that Rousseau rarely appeals 
to it. Religion and ethics are with him mostly 
matters of rhetoric; his real sanctions are always 
happiness and self-interest. He is a hedonist of the 
first rank. "The consideration of duty," he says, 
" has force only in so far as it is sujDported by motives 
that prompt us to fulfil it." 

We are now introduced to Sophie, the young woman 
who, for a long time, has been in process of education 
on these principles, with a view to union with !lSmile. 
She is, for a woman, what Emile is, for a man. She 
has had the education of Nature. Her parents, people 
of good family, and once rich, having lost the bulk of 
their property, have retired to a charming situation 
in the country, where they have led a simple and 
retired life, and reared their only daughter. This 
daughter is described to us at great length. She is 
good-natured, sensitive, imaginative, attractive but 
not pretty; she has a sweet expression, a fine com- 
plexion, a white hand, a tiny foot, and a touching 
physiognomy. She is fond of adornment, and dresses 
well. " Her attire is very modest in appearance, and 
very coquettish in fact." She has natural talents. 
She sings sweetly and tastefully; she walks lightly 
and gracefully; she makes pretty curtsies. She is 
well versed in all feminine occupations ; she cuts and 
makes her own clothes, and manufactures lace — 



186 ROUSSEAU 

"because there is no other occupation that imparts a 
more agreeable attitude, or in Avhich the fingers are 
plied with more grace and lightness " ! She can keep 
house ; but, though she is fond of good things to eat, 
she does not like cooking, because it is not altogether 
cleanly. In this matter she is extremely fastidious. 
" She would rather let a whole dinner burn up than 
have a spot on her cuff." She likes pastry and sweets, 
but cares little for meat. She is agreeable, without 
being brilliant, gay without being boisterous, sensi- 
tive, but easily pacified and forgiving. She has a 
simple, rational religion, with few dogmas, and yet 
fewer devotional exercises. She devotes her life to 
serving God by doing good; she loves virtue with 
devouring passion — because there is nothing so beau- 
tiful as virtue. She knows all the duties of both 
sexes, and longs to make one upright man happy. 
She never speaks ill of any one, and never uses vain 
forms of politeness. She hates officious gallantry, 
and, though rather short, does not wear high heels. 
She receives the flirtatious compliments of young 
men "with an ironical applause which disconcerts." 
When she reaches marriageable age, she receives 
an instructive lecture from her father, and makes a 
confidante of her mother. She reads by chance Fene- 
lon's Telemaqiie and falls in love with the hero, Avhose 
image makes all the young men she knows distasteful 
to her. In this situation she exclaims : " Let us not 
think that a lovable and virtuous man is only a chi- 
mera. He exists, he lives ; he is perhaps looking for 
me — looking for a soul that can love him. But what 
is he? Where is he ? I do not know; he is not 



EOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 187 

among those whom I have seen, and surely will not 
be among those whom I shall see. O mother! why 
have you made virtue too dear to me? If I can love 
but it, the fault is yours rather than mine ! " 

She is now ready for Emile, and Emile is ready for 
her. They must, therefore, be brought together, but 
without their knowing that this is done intentionally. 
Everything is arranged behind their backs, and they, 
with all their supposed penetration, — now height- 
ened by budding passion, — are mere innocent dupes. 
Emile's tutor, as the representative of Nature, claims 
the sole right of arranging for his marriage. "It is 
not I," he says, "who destine them for each other; it 
is Nature; my business is to discover her choice. I 
say 'my business,' and not his father's. In entrust- 
ing his son to me, he yields me his place, puts my 
right in place of his own: it is I who am Emile's real 
father; it is I who have made him a man. I should 
have refused to bring him up, had I not been per- 
mitted to marry him according to his own, that is, 
to my, choice." 

Before bringing the future lovers together, Rousseau 
enters, at some length, into the conditions of a happy 
marriage, the semi-sensuous, dalliant delights of which 
Hre to him the all-in-all of life.^ The details of these 
do not concern us here ; but three points may be noted. 
He holds (1) that, while natural love should be the 

1 It is impossible not to feel, in all Roiisseau's descriptions of 
wedded bliss, that he has before his miud bis own life with Madame 
de Warens at Les Charmettes. He seems to be continually compar- 
ing that with his life with Therese, and asking by what means the 
former could be rendered permanent. The abode of Sophie's 
parents is just Les Charmettes. See p. 45. 



188 ROUSSEAU 

determining motive of marriage, similarity of tastes 
and culture should not be disregarded; (2) that great 
beauty should be avoided, rather than sought, by a 
man in wooing; (3) that a woman with anything like 
a literary or scientific education is to be avoided like 
a pestilence. " A woman of culture " {bel esprit), he 
says, " is the plague of her husband, her children, her 
friends, her servants, everybody." 

At the proper moment, £mile and his tutor joyously 
shake the dust of corrupt and corrupting Paris from 
their feet, and start on a foot-tour, without any fixed 
destination. Rousseau's description of this tour, and 
its manifold fresh, simple delights, is masterly. Per- 
haps no man that ever lived knew the sensuous charms 
of free Nature, and of vagabond freedom, so well as 
he, and no one ever described them in such glowing 
terms. After a few days, the wanderers lose their 
way (they are always conveniently doing that!) and 
have to appeal to a kindly peasant for food. When 
they part with him, he says : " If God had graciously 
guided you to the other side of the hill, you would 
have had a better reception; you would have found a 
house of peace — such charitable, such good people ! 
They have no better heart than mine ; but they are 
better off, although I am told they were much more so 
formerly. . . . They don't suffer, thank God, and 
all the country round is better for what is left." 
Emile, of course, comes up to the occasion, being a 

1 It is needless to say that this speech has been prearranged 
with a view to producing upon Iilmile a favorable impression of 
these people. It implies in Rousseau a correct knowledge of sug- 
gestive psychology. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 189 

most satisfactory puppet. "At these words about 
good people, Emile's kind heart expands. 'Master,' 
he says, looking at me, 'let us go to this house whose 
owners are blessed in the neighborhood. I should be 
glad to see them; perhaps they would be glad to see 
us too. I am sure they will receive us well. If they 
are ours, we shall be theirs.'" They, accordingly, 
repair to the house, and are most graciously received, 
so graciously, indeed, that Emile, so often duped for 
his benefit, exclaims, in the simplicity of his heart: 
"Why, one would think we had been expected! How 
right the peasant was! What attention! What 
kindness! What foresight! And for strangers! I 
could imagine myself in the time of Homer." It is 
needless to say that we are in the home of Sophie, 
for whom Emile's imagination has so long been 
prepared. 

Sophie duly appears, behaves properly and sweetly, 
and the two fall in love with each other almost at first 
sight. The details of their courtship do not belong 
here. They form a charming idyl, one of the most 
charming ever written, which has only one drawback : 
the characters are all puppets, whose wires are in the 
hands of the all-knowing, all-designing tutor. £mile 
and this tutor establish themselves in a town some 
two leagues distant from Sophie's home, and she, with 
the consent of her parents, allows them to visit her 
about twice a week. The tutor takes care that things 
shall not proceed very rapidly; indeed, he prolongs 
the season of wooing as much as he can, on the ground 
that love's "supreme bliss is a hundred times sweeter 
to look forward to than to enjoy." Meanwhile, £mile 



190 ROUSSEAU 

is spending his time in examining the surrounding 
country, in entering into relations with peasants, 
learning their needs, giving them aid and instruction, 
showing his ability in ploughing and in the arts of 
agriculture, earning his daily bread by working as a 
carpenter, and in playing Lord Bountiful generally. 
At the end of two months, an engagement takes place, 
and Emile is in the seventh heaven. He still remains 
in Sophie's neighborhood, and is now allowed to visit 
her more frequently. He sings, plays, races, and 
dances with her, mends her piano, teaches her phi- 
losophy,^ physics, mathematics, history; indeed, 
everything he knows. They draw and paint together, 
and decorate Sophie's home with the results. At the 
end of three months, Emile fondly thinks that the 
consummation of all his hopes is near. But alas ! his 
tutor, whom he has undertaken to obey, has a bitter 
disappointment in store for him. He must postpone 
the realization of his dearest wishes, control his pas- 
sion, and leave Sophie for two years. He is not ready 
to marry. He does not know either himself or Sophie 
sufficiently ; he has not sufficiently realized the duties 
of husband and father; he has almost no acquaintance 
with social and political relations. The tutor, who 
has hitherto spoken and acted like an optimistic Epi- 
curean, declaring that his sole desire was to secure 
the happiness of his pupil, ^ now suddenly changes his 
tone and adopts that of a severe, pessimistic Stoic, 

1 Here Rousseau is careful to tell us that " the art of thinking is 
not foreign to women ; but they must do no more than graze the 
sciences of reasoning." 

2 He says, in so many words: "I have not educated my ;6 mile 
to desire or to wait, hut to enjoy." 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 191 

Man must rise above his natural desires and passions, 
and take Keason for his guide. He must detach him- 
self from all dependence upon transient and earthly- 
things, and be prepared for every change of fortune. 
The man " who has no laws but the wishes of his 
heart, and can resist no desire," is guilty of a crime. 
"Who, then, is the virtuous man? He who can 
govern his affections ; for then he follows reason and 
conscience. He does his duty, and nothing can make 
him swerve from it." . . . "All the passions are 
good, so long as we are masters of them ; all are bad, 
as soon as we become enslaved to them." . . . "All 
the feelings which we master are legitimate ; all those 
which master us are criminal. A man is not to blame 
for loving his neighbor's wife, so long as he keeps his 
unfortunate passion in subjection to the law of duty ; 
he is to blame for loving his own wife, when he goes 
so far as to sacrifice everything to this love." . . . 
" If you wish to live virtuous and wise, let your heart 
cleave only to the beauty that perishes not, . . . ex- 
tend the law of necessity to things moral; learn to 
lose what may be taken away ; to give up all at the 
command of virtue, and to place yourself beyond the 
reach of events." . . . "Then you will be happy in 
spite of fortune, and self-controlled in spite of pas- 
sion. Then you will find in the possession of tran- 
sient things a delight which nothing can disturb. 
You will possess them, without their possessing you, 
and you will come to feel that man, from whom every- 
thing drops away, enjoys only that which he knows 
how to lose." ]fimile is, of course, outraged, at such 
unwonted talk, and declares that he cannot leave 



192 ROUSSEAU 

Sophie without being "a traitor, a scoundrel, and a 
perjurer." The tutor lets him vent his first indigna- 
tion, and then continues, saying, among other things: 
"Sensual happiness is transient." . . . "The imagi- 
nation, which tricks out the objects of desire, leaves 
them bare, when they become objects of possession. 
Except the one self-existent Being, there is nothing 
beautiful but what is not. If your present condition 
could have lasted always, you would have found the 
supreme good. But all that relates to man withers 
as he does; all is finite, all is transient in human 
life." . . . " Not yet trained to battle with himself, 
not yet accustomed to desire one thing and will 
another, the young man refuses to yield; he resists 
and disputes." He does not see why he must go 
away; or, if he must go, why he cannot make sure 
of Sophie, by marrying her first. The tutor points 
out to him the impropriety of leaving a wife, and, 
when Emile still recalcitrates, puts an end to further 
dispute by a fiat of authority. " Since you will not 
obey reason," he says, "then recognize another mas- 
ter. You have not forgotten the compact which you 
entered into with me. Emile, you must leave Sophie : 
I desire it." At this the young man yields, and their 
departure is fixed for a week later. 

Sophie and her parents have to be won over to the 
new scheme, and this is a matter of no small diffi- 
culty. Sophie tries to bear up under her sad trial, 
but in secret weeps and wails in spite of herself. The 
tutor comforts and reassures her; and one day says to 
her: "Sophie, exchange books with !lSmile. Give 
him your Telemaque, in order that he may learn to be 



KOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 193 

like him ; and let him give you the Spectator, which 
you are so fond of reading. Study in it the duties of 
virtuous women, and think that in two years these 
duties will be yours." The lovers at last part in this 
fashion: "Emile, impatient, ardent, agitated, beside 
himself, shrieks, sheds torrents of tears on the hands 
of father, mother, and daughter, embraces with sobs 
all the people in the house, and repeats the same 
things over and over again a thousand times, with a 
disorder that would excite laughter on any other oc- 
casion.^ Sophie, sad, pale, with lustreless eye and 
mournful look, remains quiet, utters not a word, 
weeps not, sees no one, not even Emile. In vain he 
takes her hands, and clasps her in his arms; she re- 
mains motionless and insensible to his tears, his 
caresses, to everything that he does. How much 
more touching this object is than the importunate 
wails and noisy regrets of her lover! He sees it, 
feels it, is torn by it. I have difficulty in dragging 
him off. If I leave him a moment, I shall never 
get him to leave. I am delighted that he carries with 
him this sad image. If ever he is tempted to forget 
what he owes to Sophie, and I recall her to his mind, 
as he saw her at the moment of his departure, his 
heart will have to be sadly alienated, if I cannot bring 
him back to her." 

There may be differences of opinion in regard to 
the value of travelling at this juncture in a young 
man's life; but there can hardly be any in regard to 
the method by which Emile is induced, or rather 
forced, to undertake it. That a young man who, up 
1 6raile did, indeed, need to learn self-coutrol. 



194 ROUSSEAU 

to the age of twenty-two, has always followed, or 
thought he followed, his own inclination, should 
suddenly be commanded to set his strongest inclina- 
tion at defiance, is a piece of the most wanton tyranny 
and cruelty, an attempt to reap where one has not 
sowed. That the young maxi, who does not know 
what obedience means, and who does not see his own 
interest or utility in what he is called upon to do, 
should obey, is not only extremely improbable, but 
very discreditable, showing that he has not escaped 
from the tyranny of his fellows, or become self- 
determining. He has taken a vow, like a mediaeval 
monk, and is still subject to "obedience."^ Still 
more improbable and discreditable is it that he should 
suddenly exchange his life-long, thoughtless, joyous 
optimism for a gloomy, disheartening, brooding pes- 
simism, to which 

" The world is all a passing show, 
For man's illusion given." 

But the worst feature of the whole matter is that, 
while calling upon his pupil to obey the voice of 
reason and conscience, Rousseau shows no reason 
why this voice should be obeyed, any more than the 
voice of passion and interest. So far as we are 
shown, both are equally subjective and blind, and 
there is no third faculty to be umpire between them. 
The moral law cannot remain a mere ungrounded 
''categorical imperative," but must be shown to be 

1 It is astonishiug how many of the worst features of mediseval- 
ism — religious intolerance, mystic fanaticism, vows, confession, 
etc. — still survive in Rousseau. He had learnt much from the 
Jesuits. 



EOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 195 

the expression of man's essential relations to the uni- 
verse. Tliis, however, cannot be shown without a 
profound, painfully acquired, scientific knowledge of 
the world, and of man, as a cooperant, essentially 
social member of the same, nor without a carefully 
reasoned philosophy resting on this knowledge; and 
with these conditions, Rousseau, in his supercilious, 
unsocial subjectivism, claiming for itself supernatural 
inspiration, would have nothing to do.^ It is not, 
therefore, wonderful that he landed in all sorts of 
contradictions, and, in the end, proved unfaithful to 
his own principles. 

Emile leaves his Sophie, and sets out upon his 
travels, still accompanied by his despotic tutor. The 
purpose of these travels is ostensibly one of self-inter- 
est, — to enable Emile to discover the country in 
which he can settle down to quiet family life, with 
the best hope of independence and liberty, Rousseau 
holds that every man, when he comes to the age of 
discretion, has a right to choose his country. He 
tells us very little about Emile's travels; but he says 
many wise things regarding the value and method of 
travelling, as a means of education. Its value lies in 
the fact that it does away with local and national 
prejudices, puts experience in place of imagination, 
widens the sympatliies, enables one to distinguish 
humanity under all guises, to reject what is accidental 
and spurious in it, and to cling to what is natural and 

1 Any one who claims a knowledge of theoretic or ethical princi- 
ples, not grounded on experience, must be regarded as claiming 
inspiration. Even Kant, with his Rousselian "categorical impera- 
tive " was not exempt from this weakness. 



196 ROUSSEAU 

genuine. Its method is that which brings the trav- 
eller most directly and closely in contact with the 
people of each country, enabling him to learn their 
language and become acquainted with their habits, 
customs, and ways of regarding things. The method 
of the ordinary tourist, whose main objects are scen- 
ery, cities, churches, galleries, museums, and public 
exhibitions, is altogether to be eschewed. Cities and 
city-people are pretty much the same all over Europe : 
they are all equally depraved by culture. " It is the 
country {campagne) that makes the country (pays), 
and the country people that make the nation." . . . 
"It is always in capitals that human blood is sold 
cheapest. Thus one becomes acquainted only with 
the great peoples, and the great peoples are all alike." 
... " The Europeans are no longer Gauls, Germans, 
Iberians, Allobroges; they are merely Scythians that 
have variously degenerated in face, and still more 
in morals." £mile, therefore, will merely glance at 
cities, and spend most of his time in remote country 
districts, where the people are still simple and unde- 
praved. And he will not merely see and hear: he 
will also think. With his tutor he will discuss the 
origin and nature of social institutions, and of those 
relations and duties that arise under them. In this 
matter, little aid can be derived from books. " Politi- 
cal Eight is a science which has yet to be born; and 
we may presume it never will be born. Grotius, the 
master of all our scholars in this matter, is but a 
baby, and, what is worse, a baby of bad faith. When 
I hear Grotius lauded to the skies, and Hobbes loaded 
with execrations, I see how much sensible men read 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 197 

or understand of these authors. The truth is, their 
principles are exactly similar; they differ only in 
expression. They differ also in method. Hobbes 
takes his stand on sophisms, Grotius on the poets; 
all the rest they have in common." . . . "The only 
modern man who might have created this great and 
useful science, was the famous Montesquieu. But 
he never thought of dealing with the principles of 
political right: he stopped short with the positive 
right of established governments ; and no two things 
in the world are more different than these two studies." 
Such being the condition of things, Smile's tutor must 
help himself, as best he can, by means of original 
thinking. 

It is but fair to say that the above criticisms of 
Hobbes, Grotius, and Montesquieu are, in the main, 
correct, and that to Rousseau himself is due a large 
share of the credit for originating the science of Politi- 
cal Right. With all its obvious mistakes, his Social 
Contract was an epoch-making book. We need not 
wonder, therefore, that the questions which Emile is 
led to consider are, in the main, those dealt with and 
answered in that book, or that he comes to the conclu- 
sions therein reached. Rousseau plainly admits this; 
and whatever we may think of these conclusions, we 
ought cheerfully to admit that hardly any book more 
provocative of thought — and such provocativeness is 
the greatest merit of any decent book — could be put 
into the hands of a young man of serious mind. If, 
while reading it, he have a wise and learned guide, 
he will see the extreme importance of the questions 
broached, and be led to inquiries and considerations 



198 ROUSSEAU 

■which will reveal to him the fallacies involved in the 
attempt to answer them ; and even if, for a short time, 
left to himself, he fall a victim to Rousseau's pas- 
sionate and specious rhetoric, he will free himself as 
soon as the glamour of that has worn off, and through 
experience, study, and careful thought, seek other 
solutions of his own.^ 

After an absence of two years, devoted to experience 
and thought in social matters, Emile, who has all the 
time been looking out for a place to settle in, comes to 
the conclusion that one place (provided it is not in a 
city) is as good as another. "I remember," he says 
to his tutor, " that my property was the cause of our 
researches. You proved to me very cogently that I 
could not retain at once my riches and my liberty; 
but, when you wished me to be at once free and with- 
out needs, you were suggesting two things that are 
incompatible; for I cannot withdraw myself from de- 
pendence upon men, without reverting to dependence 
upon Nature, What, then, shall I do with my in- 
herited fortune ? I shall begin by ceasing to depend 
upon it; I shall slacken all the ties that bind me to 
it: if it is left to me, I shall keep it; if it is taken 
from me, I shall not be dragged off along with it. I 
shall not torment myself to retain it; but I shall 

1 The Social Contract ought to be a leading text-book in all 
classes in political science. It should be remembered that, in the 
hands of an able teacher, a bad book, calling for strong adverse 
criticism, is often far better than a good one, which leaves teacher 
and pupil nothing to do but to repeat and accept. Moreover, in 
these days, it is of no small importance that the false teaching of 
the Social Contract, still influential wherever there is not a pro- 
found acquaintance with political science, should be dragged to the 
light and exposed. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 199 

remain firm in my place. Kich or poor, I shall 
be free. I shall be so not only in such or such a 
country or region : I shall be so all the world over. 
For me all the chains of opinion are broken. I know 
only those of necessity. I have learnt to wear them 
since my childhood, and I shall wear them till the 
day of my death ; for I am a man. And why should 
I not wear them in freedom, since I should still have 
to wear them in slavery, and those of slavery besides. 
What matters my position in the world ? What mat- 
ters it where I am ? Wherever there are men, I am 
among my brothers : wherever there are none, I am at 
home with myself. As long as I can remain indepen- 
dent and rich, I have the means of living, and I shall 
live. When my property enslaves me, I shall aban- 
don it without difficulty : I have arms to work with, 
and I shall live. When my arms fail me, I shall live, 
if I am supported; I shall die, if I am deserted. I 
shall die, even if I am not deserted; for death is not a 
punishment for poverty, but a law of Nature. Let 
death come when it will, I defy it : it Avill never find 
me making preparations to live : it will not prevent 
me from having lived. Such, father, is my fixed 
purpose. If I were without passions, I should, in 
my human condition, be independent as God himself, 
since, desiring only what is, I should never have to 
struggle with fate. At least, I shall have but one 
chain: it is the only one I shall always wear, and I 
may well be proud of it. Come, then, give me 
Sophie, and I am free." 

fimile, having thus reached the desired mood of 
pessimistic, Stoic independence, and learnt to look 



200 ROUSSEAU 

upon life as a passing show, receives the commenda- 
tions of his tutor, but is, at the same time, warned 
that he will not be quite so Stoical when he has chil- 
dren, and that he must submit to other yokes besides 
that of marriage. " £mile ! " says his tutor, " where 
is the good man that owes nothing to his country ? 
Whoever he may be, he owes it man's most precious 
dower, the morality of his actions and the love of 
virtue. Born in the depths of a forest, he would 
have lived happier and freer; but, having nothing to 
resist in order to follow his passions, he would have 
been good without merit: he would not have been 
virtuous, whereas now he can be so in spite of his 
passions. The mere appearance of order prompts him 
to know and love it. The public good, which serves 
but as a pretext to others, is to him alone a real mo- 
tive. He learns to battle with himself, to conquer 
himself, to sacrifice his own, to the common, inter- 
est. It is not true that he derives no benefit from 
the laws; they give him the courage to be just even 
among the wicked. It is not true that they have 
not made him free; they have taught him to rule 
himself."^ 

]Smile is then shown that his place of abode ought 
not to be indifferent to him, and that "one of his 
duties is attachment to the place of his birth " and to 
his countrymen. "Live in the midst of them," ex- 
claims the tutor; "cultivate their friendship in gentle 
intercourse ; be their benefactor, their model. Your 
example will avail them more than all our books, and 

1 It is needless to remark that Rousseau here abandons the posi- 
tion toward civil life taken in the Discourses. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 201 

the good they see you do will touch them more deeply 
than all our vain talk. I do not advise you, on this 
account, to go and live in great cities; on the con- 
trary, one of the examples which good men ought to 
set to others is to live a patriarchal, country life, the 
primitive life of man, the most peaceful, the most 
natural, and the sweetest for a mail of uncorrupted 
heart." Following this advice, iSmile resolves to take 
up his abode with Sophie's parents, and the long- 
desired marriage at last takes place, to the infinite 
joy of the lovers. When the ceremony is over, the 
tutor takes them aside, and, in a sensible, but ill-timed 
discourse, which makes the one protest and the other 
blush, shows them how they may indefinitely prolong 
their happiness, and remain lovers in the married 
state. He thereupon abdicates his authority, turning 
it over to Sophie. 

When the honeymoon is over, the lovers settle down 
"to enjoy, in peace, the charms of their new con- 
dition." The tutor is happy over the results of his 
twenty-five years' labor. "How often," he says, "do 
I join their hands in mine, blessing Providence, and 
breathing ardent sighs ! How many kisses do I pour 
upon these two hands that clasp each other! With 
how many tears of joy do they feel me water them ! 
They, in turn, sharing my transports, melt with ten- 
derness." At the end of some months Emile enters 
his tutor's room and, embracing him, informs him 
that he (Emile) will soon be a father. "But," he 
continues, "remain the master of the young masters. 
Advise us, govern us : we will be docile. As long as 
I live, I shall need you.. I have more need of you 



202 ROUSSEAU 

than ever, now that my functions as a man are begin- 
ning. You have fulfilled yours ; teach me to imitate 
you; and rest, for it is high time." 

So, with the culmination of ^fimile's bliss, the book 
ends. 



CHAPTER X 

ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 

Manhood 

{l^mile and Sophie, or the Solitaries) 

Dein eigen ist Alles, 
Dein Heil, wie dein Unheil, 
Dein Wollen und Wahnen, 
Dein Sinnen und Sein. 

Jordan, Die Nihelunge. 

For man is man, and master of his fate. 

Tennyson, Idyls of the King. 

Deus ipse voluntatem cogere non potest. 

Thomas Aquinas. 

There is no house prepared for thee after thy death, but that 
of which, before thy death, thou hast been the architect. 

Al Ghazzali. 

There can be little doubt that, when Rousseau fin- 
ished i^mile in 1762, he meant to end it, like other 
fairy tales, with " And so they were married, and lived 
happily ever after." In course of time, however, it 
seems to have struck him that an education which was 
good enough for well-mated, prosperous, and happy 
people, might be utterly useless for people otherwise 
situated. Accordingly in JiJmile and Sophie, or the 
Solitaries,''- he undertook to show how his system 

1 This work, which was never finished, takes a form of a series 
of letters from Emile to his tutor. See p. 70. 

203 



204 , ROUSSEAU 

would work in adversity. To do this, he had to 
break in upon the peaceful, patriarchal life of his 
wards, and to render both of them profoundly miser- 
able, in fact, to drive them to the brink of despair. 

After several years of undimmed happiness, during 
which a son and a daughter are born to them, jfimile 
and Sophie are suddenly visited with a series of 
calamities, all the more terrible that the tutor has 
ceased to live with them. First, Sophie's father dies, 
then her mother, and, lastly, her idolized daughter. 
Untrained to misfortune, the poor young wife is 
utterly inconsolable, and f:lls the house and its sur- 
roundings with tears, sobs, and cries. In order to 
give her a needful change of environment, her hus- 
band, who now for the first time has " what is called 
business" in the capital, resolves to remove her 
thither, and take her to be near a friend whose 
acquaintance she has made in the neighborhood. 
Gloomy forebodings seize upon J^mile as he ap- 
proaches the city; but he shakes them off and pro- 
ceeds. In the course of his two years' residence, 
amid the corrupting influences of city life, his whole 
being undergoes a change. Unguarded now by any 
tutor, and not subject to obedience, he forms new 
connections, acquires frivolous tastes, becomes a 
pleasure-seeker, and, though never unfaithful to his 
wife, finds his heart gradually losing all warmth and 
force. He becomes " gallant without tenderness, a Stoic 
without virtues, a sage given up to follies." At last 
he finds, or thinks he finds, that he no longer loves 
his wife. Meanwhile, his wife, as inexperienced as 
himself, and in need of distraction to lighten her 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 205 

sorrow, allows herself to be drawn by her friend into 
corrupt society, where she becomes familiarized, not 
only with frivolity, but with vice, so that she gradu- 
ally loses interest both in her husband and in her son. 
Husband and wife, though still living under the same 
roof, now become estranged from each other, and 
lead separate lives. Finally, Sophie, under the influ- 
ence of her corrupt, virtue-despising friend, and 
apparently with but slight blame on her own part, 
falls from virtue.^ From this moment she avoids all 
society, and sits lonely, gloomy, and tearful in her 
own room. She expresses great horror of her friend 
and her friend's husband, and !fimile is obliged to 
forbid them the house. Alarm at his wife's condition 
now fans into a flame his smouldering affection, and 
he tries to reestablish the old intimate relations, but 
finds her completely cold and irresponsive. His per- 
sistent attentions, however, finally move her; but, 
instead of deceiving him, as she might easily have 
done, she heroically tells him : " I am no longer any- 
thing to you. ... I am enceiyite, " darts into her room 
and closes the door after her. Emile, completely 
crushed and annihilated by this revelation, wanders 
about for thirty-six hours, like a madman, without 
sleep or food, devoured by the most poignant reflec- 
tions and regrets. At last he reaches a village, 
where he sups and sleeps soundly. The next day 
he finds his way to a city, and enters the shop of a 

1 We are not permitted to know the details of this fall. "No, 
never," writes l^mile, "shall these hideous details escape my pen 
or my mouth. It were too unjust to the memory of the worthiest of 
women." . . . "Worldly morality, snare of vice and of examx^le, 
treason of false friendship, which of us is proof against you! " 



206 KOUSSEAU 

carpenter, as an ordinary workman. Here lie gradu- 
ally comes to himself, realizes the nobility of his 
wife's declaration, and begins to feel that she may, 
after all, be far less culpable than he has thought. 
Unable to trust her, however, he resolves to remove 
his son from her keeping, a.nd is making preparations 
to do this, when he learns that a lady with a child 
has come and, unseen, watched him at his work; that 
she has shown signs of great mental anguish; and 
that, after kneeling for a long time, she has risen 
and, pressing her cheek against that of the child, ex- 
claimed in stifled tones : " No, he will never take your 
mother from you!" Emile at once recognizes the 
secret visitors to have been his wife and child, and is 
struck by his wife's sad words. They present to him 
a new aspect of the case. While he might be willing 
to remove the child from the guilty mother, he can- 
not think of removing the mother from the innocent 
child. So he resolves to do nothing in the matter. 
Having now, however, become an object of curiosity 
to his fellow-workmen and their wives, he resolves to 
avoid recognition and go further off in search of em- 
ployment. He, accordingly, makes his way on foot 
to Marseilles, and takes passage on board a vessel 
bound for Naples, along with a number of other per- 
sons. The skipper proves to be a jolly, rollicking 
fellow, who does his best to keep his passengers in 
good humor; but Emile, who knows about the sun's 
course and about compasses, begins, after a time, to 
suspect that they are not going in the direction of 
their proposed destination. His suspicion is soon 
confirmed; for no sooner do they come in sight of 



KOUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 207 

land than they see a corsair coming toward them. 
Being without means of defence, they are soon 
boarded by the corsair's crew, whereupon it becomes 
evident that the skipper is in collusion with them, 
and that all the passengers, having been drawn into a 
trap, are destined to be the slaves of the Moors. The 
skipper does not long enjoy the success of his roguery; 
for ^rnile strikes off his head with a sabre, and sends 
it flying into the sea. By this act he earns the re- 
spect of his captors, and is not put in irons, like the 
rest of the passengers. On landing, however, he is 
sent, like the rest, to the galleys. Here, having time 
to reflect, he concludes that slavery, after all, is 
nothing so terrible. "Who can make me wear two 
chains ? " he says. " Did I not wear one before ? 
There is no real servitude but that to Nature ; men are 
only its instruments. Whether a master finish me, 
or a rock crush me, the event is the same in my eyes, 
and the worst that can happen to me in slavery is not 
to be able to move a tyrant more than a stone. And, 
indeed, if I had my freedom, what should I do with 
it ? In my present state, what can I desire ? Alas ! 
to prevent me from sinking into annihilation, I need 
to be animated with another's will in default of 
my own." This piece of characteristic Eousselian 
sophistry, which would justify any form of slavery, 
convinces him that his change of condition is more 
apparent than real, " that, if liberty consisted in doing 
what one wishes, no man would be free ; that all are 
weak, dependent upon things and upon stern neces- 
sity ; that he who can best will all that it ordains is 
the most free, since he is never forced to do what he 



208 ROUSSEAU 

does not wish,"^ And so, says Emile, "the days of 
my slavery were the days of my sovereignty, and I 
had never more authority over myself than when I 
was wearing the chains of the barbarians." 

Emile comes into the possession of several masters, 
and is at first treated kindly, his owners hoping that 
friends will ransom him; but, as no efforts are made 
in his behalf, he is sent to work, and works cheerfully 
and well, while his companions, reared to be gentle- 
men and philosophers, and not to be men, only suffer 
and bewail their lot, many of them dying off from ill 
treatment. At last, Emile himself comes under a 
brutal overseer, who, observing him attempt to help 
his weaker comrades, so overloads him with work 
that he feels he must soon succumb under it. Seeing 
that, at the worst, he can only die, he foments a re- 
bellion among his fellows, which the overseer vainly 
tries to lash down. This brings the owner upon the 
scene. Emile explains the facts to him, and appeals 
to his interest in such a way that the cruel overseer 
and Emile are made to exchange places. The latter 
proves an excellent overseer, and his conduct, getting 
noised abroad, comes to the ears of the Dey of Algiers, 
who desires to see him. This dey, a sensible man, 
who has worked his way up from the ranks, having 
taken a liking to him, receives him, as a gift, from 
his master. Thus, in every relation of life, even the 
most difficult and trying, Emile finds the value of 

1 Here we have the germs of the Schopenhauerian doctrine that 
true freedom consists in renouncing all will, even the " will to live," 
which means that to be happy is not to be at all — the last conclu- 
siou of pessimism. 



ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES 209 

his education, and its superiority to that of other 
men. 

The work breaks off at this point; but its aim and 
outcome are obvious enough. The providential tutor, 
who has evidently foreseen everything, now goes to 
work to bring good ou.t of evil. Thanks to the 
meniory of a Genevese pastor, who was on friendly 
terms with E-ousseau in his closing years, we know, 
in a general way, the close. " A succession of events 
brings Emile to a desert island. He finds on the 
shore a temple adorned with flowers and delicious 
fruits. He visits it every day, and every day he finds 
it decked out. Sophie is the priestess. Emile does 
not know this. What events can have brought her 
to these regions ? The consequences of her fault and 
the actions which efface it. Sophie finally reveals 
herself. Emile learns the tissue of fraud and vio- 
lence to which she has succumbed. But, unworthy 
henceforth to be his mate, she desires to be his slave 
and to serve her rival. This rival is a young person 
whom other events have joined to the lot of the former 
husband and wife. This rival marries Emile; Sophie 
is present at the wedding. Finally, after some days 
spent in the bitterness of repentance, and the tor- 
ments of ever-renewed pain, all the more keen that 
Sophie makes it a duty and a point of honor to dis- 
semble it, Emile and Sophie's rival confess that their 
marriage was only a make-believe. This pretended 
rival has a husband of her own, who is introduced to 
Sophie, and Sophie gets back her own, who not only 
forgives her involuntary fault, atoned for by the most 
cruel sufferings and redeemed by repentance, but 



210 EOUSSEAU 

values and honors, in her, virtues of which he had had 
but a faint notion, before they had found opportunity 
to unfold to their full extent." 

Thus Rousseau has proved, to his satisfaction, two 
things : (1) that his education according to Nature will 
enable men and women to stand the test of the sever- 
est adversity, defying not only suffering, but also 
public opinion, and (2) that the life of cities is alto- 
gether corrupt and corrupting. 

What becomes of Emile and Sophie, after their 
reconciliation, we are not told; but perhaps we may 
conclude that, finding themselves self-sufficient, they 
conclude to end their days, living after the fashion of 
Robinson Crusoe, or, rather, of Franz von Kleist's 
Zamori and his mate, on their desert island, thus 
returning to a state of Nature, whose charms are 
heightened by the bitter experiences of civilization.^ 
It is just possible, however, that we have in the later 
books of The New Helo'ise a picture of their conjugal 
happiness. Julie and Sophie have much in common, 
even their fall. 

1 See Emerson's poem, The Adirondacks. 



CHAPTER XI 

CONCLUSION. — ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 

The history of the world is the judgment of the world. 

Schiller. 

Let him, the wiser man who springs 
Hereafter, up from childhood shape 
His action like the greater ape ; 

But I was born for other tilings. 

Tennyson, In Memoriam, cxx. 

The history of mankind is a progress in the consciousness of 
freedom. Hegel. 

Having followed Rousseau's educational scheme 
from its beginning to its last effects upon manhood 
and womanhood, we have now to consider its value, 
to estimate its moral bearings, and to see whether it 
could properly lead to the results claimed for it. 

That the influence of Rousseau's ideas upon educa- 
tional theory and practice was, and is, great, no one 
will deny. In education, as in other things, his pas- 
sionate rhetoric and his scorn for the conventional 
existent, as contrasted with the ideal simplicity of 
Nature, roused men from their slumbers, and made 
them reconsider all that they had so long blindly 
taken for granted and bowed before. And in so far 
his work was invaluable. His bitter, sneering con- 
demnation of the corrupt, hypocritical, fashionable 
life of his time, with its distorting, debasing, and 

211 



212 ROUSSEAU 

dehumanizing notions of education, and his eloquent 
plea for a return to a life truly and simply human, and 
to an education based upon the principles of human 
nature and calculated to prepare for such a life, were 
righteous and well timed. His purpose was thoroughly 
right, and he knew how to make himself heard in 
giving expression to it. But, when he came to inform 
the world in detail how this purpose was to be carried 
out, he undertook a task for which he was not fitted 
either by natural endowment or by education. His 
passionate, sensuous, dalliant, and immoral nature 
prevented him from seeing wherein man's highest 
being and aim consist, while his ignorance and his 
contempt for study, science, and philosophy closed 
his eyes to the historic process by which men have 
not only come to be what they now are, but by which 
their future course must be freely determined, and 
made him substitute for it a spurious scheme, put 
together out of certain vague notions of history afloat 
in his time and certain fancies of his own vivid imag- 
ination. 

Thus, his own temperament and the reminiscences 
of his own capricious, undisciplined childhood led 
him to think that the child is a mere sensuous being, 
swayed by purely sensuous instincts, and inaccessible 
to reason or conscience, and that these, when called 
forth by social demands, are marks of depravation and 
badges of unfreedom. His utter inability to conceive 
of moral life, as a thoughtful adjustment of the indi- 
vidual to the universe, and as a self-sufficient end, for 
the attainment of which every sacrifice, intelligently 
and voluntarily made, is a gain, and ought to be a 



KOUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 213 

joy, made him, on the one hand, regard man as a mere 
plaything in the hands of a kindly but capricious 
God, and, on the other, to represent him as the help- 
less victim of an inexorable necessity or fate. Wav- 
ering hopelessly between these mutually contradictory 
Christian and Stoic notions, he never arrived at any 
conception of the true meaning of spiritual freedom, 
or the true ideal of social existence. His notion of 
freedom was almost purely negative, and, therefore, 
both empty and unsocial. He did not, and could not, 
see that freedom, like intelligence and affection, has 
no content save in a world wherein each individual 
spirit is, through its own essential activity, freely 
related to all other spirits, and gradually perfects 
itself by ever richer, deeper, and freer forms of this 
relation. He did not see that this process coincides 
with the gradual unfolding of reason and will, as they 
differentiate and particularize themselves out of that 
vague affection, or desiderant feeling, which consti- 
tutes the undeveloped soul. He did not see that even 
the first differentiation, in the " fundamental feeling " 
involves consciousness and therefore reason, and the 
first movement in obedience to one feeling, rather 
than another, the first stirring of selective conscience, 
or will. He did not see that the gradual differentia- 
tion of feeling into perceptions and volitions is the 
gradual creation of a world of beings in thought and 
will, that things and persons are distinguished through 
an effort to group feelings and satisfactions, by refer- 
ring them to particular common sou.rces, and that, 
apart from this process, there would be no conscious- 
ness, and no world, at all. In a word, he failed alto- 



214 ROUSSEAU 

gether to see that existence is essentially social and, 
therefore, moral, alien alike to caprice and to neces- 
sity. As a consequence of this, he failed to understand 
the true nature of education, which is simply the effort 
to enable children, from the moment they begin to 
use reason and will, that is, to distinguish one feeling 
and one attraction from another, so to classify and 
group these feelings and attractions that an orderly, 
self-consistent, and rational world, with a hierarchy 
of well-defined attractions, shall gradually shape itself 
in their minds, and make a rational and moral life 
possible for them. In denying reason and conscience 
to the child, he was denying it the very agencies by 
which its world is built up, and, in trying to isolate it 
from society, he was depriving it of a large portion, 
and that too the most important, of those feelings 
or experiences with which these agencies have to 
work, and so impoverishing the child's world. The 
truth is, Rousseau himself had no rationally or morally 
organized world of his own. Much remained for him 
in the condition of almost brute feeling or emotion, 
round which his fancy played in the most capricious 
fashion. Then, when he attempted arbitrarily to in- 
troduce unity into this chaotic world, he invented for 
the purpose, out of old traditions, sometimes a capri- 
cious, and sometimes a necessary, first principle, 
neither of which could, in the nature of things, 
organize that world, or give him any real freedom in 
it. A mind like his, incapable of reducing its world 
to clear visibility and transparent unity, was natu- 
rally dependent upon its unorganized moods, and was 
liable to pass from the most joyous optimism, at one 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 215 

leap, to the gloomiest pessimism. This is the secret 
of his emotional deism, of his sudden change from 
Epicureanism to Stoicism, from spontaneity to au- 
thority in Emile's education, and of his oscillation 
between religious intolerance and the most complete 
liberalism.^ 

The failure of Rousseau to realize that education is 
the process by which a world of rational distinctions 
and ends is developed in the child's mind, also closed 
his eyes to the fact that it must be so conducted that 
the distinctions made by the child form, as far as 
possible, a coherent, self-explaining whole at every 
moment, and that this whole shall be duly articulated 
as fast as it grows, leaving no undigested clots of feel- 
ing or experience to baffle and stupefy the expanding 
mind. As a result of this, his educational system, 
though divided into epochs, is otherwise altogether 
disorderly, and he is far more interested that the child 
should enjoy himself, revelling in a present chaos of 
disconnected sensations, than that he should know the 
joy of creating for himself, out of them, a rational and 
eternal world. Hence his frivolous and oft-repeated 
plea that the future should be sacrificed to the pres- 
ent, for fear that the future may never come — a 
strange enough caution for one who pretended to be- 
lieve in immortality. If that is a fact, then surely all 
spiritual gains made by the human being, at any 



1 See above, p. 184. In The New HdoUe, Pt. III., Let. V., he 
says: "No true believer can be intolerant or a persecutor. If I 
were a magistrate, and the law ordained the burning of atheists, 
I should begin by burning, as such, the first man who informed 
against another." 



216 ROUSSEAU 

period of his life, Avill tell to all eternity, no matter 
when he leaves this earthly scene; and he can do 
nothing more recklessly foolish than forget the future 
in the present. But, in making this plea, Rousseau, 
characteristically enough, failed altogether to see 
that, even for a child, there is a much higher sort of 
enjoyment than mere capricious, sensuous dalliance, 
namely, the enjoyment that comes from an orderly 
exertion of his will in view of an end, and was utterly 
unaware that such exertion is the process by which 
all strong and consistent characters are formed. We 
need not, therefore, be surprised to lind Emile arriv- 
ing at the age of twenty, so destitute of all ends and 
aims that, if he were not watched at every moment, 
night and day, he would become an easy prey to his 
dalliant sensibilities. A young man who has learnt 
to make the present subservient to the future by the 
exercise of his will, in the continual pursuit of worthy 
ends, and who knows the delight that comes from the 
attainment of these, will hardly be so victimized. 

It may perhaps be permitted to point out here that 
the great educational principle of introducing unity 
and system into life, by completing the present with 
the future, is embodied in the beautiful Praxitelean 
group of Hermes and the Infant Dionysus. Here 
we have the ideal tutor and pupil. The elder god, 
the perfect type of glorious yovmg manhood, carries 
the younger, a highly intelligent, almost mature-faced 
child, on his left arm. The child places his right 
hand on the shoulder of his guardian, stretches his 
left out toward something, probably a bunch of grapes, 
which the latter holds aloft in his left, and looks be- 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 217 

seechingly into his face. But Hermes does not return 
the look, or smile. His earnest eyes have a far look. 
In tempting forth into action the child's natural 
desires, he is gazing, not at the present, but at the 
distant future. This expresses the spirit of Greek 
education, whose patron Hermes was, as Avell as of all 
education whose purpose is to make strong, wise, 
determined men. 

A very striking result of Rousseau's sensuous nature 
was his view of women, and of the education proper 
for them. For him, woman is never a spiritual being, 
the equal of man in freedom, an end to herself, and 
entering into sexual relations by free choice for cer- 
tain ends, by her desired and approved. She is merely 
a female, the slave and instrument of man, a creature 
whose whole being is exhausted in her sexuality. 
Her education, therefore, is merely the education of 
her sexuality, and ought, on no account, to go beyond 
this. Rousseau's conception of women is one that has 
been only too common in France, as in all countries 
where the Moslem pseudo-virtue of chivalry, or exter- 
nal palaver in their presence, has taken the place of that 
real virtue of inner gentlemanliness, which regards 
women first as human beings, endowed with all human 
attributes and rights, and afterwards as women, with 
special duties and privileges. It is a conception which, 
while pretending to elevate women into mistresses, 
degrades them into slaves, and deprives them of that 
dignity of freedom, which alone imparts value to life. 

If Rousseau's character led him into manifold errors, 
his contemptuous ignorance of philosophy, science, 
and history led him into many more. Thus, in addi- 



218 KOUSSEAU 

tion to assuming a relation of opposition between 
sensation and reason, and thereby introducing a Mani- 
chaean division into the individual man, he placed a 
similar opposition between Nature and Culture, and 
thereby broke the continuity, and rendered unintelli- 
gible the course, of social evolution. Worse than 
this, having failed to recognize that all existence is 
essentially social and moral, and regarding the un- 
social, sub-moral man as complete and self-sufficient, 
he was bold enough to maintain that all social rela- 
tions and all the powers, intellectual and moral, de- 
manded and evolved by these, are so many forms of 
degeneration. Believing that man was forced into 
sociability only by selfish motives, and that society 
exists only to enable him to preserve as much as pos- 
sible of his natural Cyclopean^ freedom,^ he continu- 
ally holds up the state of Nature, in which man is a 
mere instinct-guided animal, living wholly in the pres- 
ent, without plan or purpose, as his ideal condition, 
to be regained whenever possible. His whole system 
of education, accordingly, aims at rendering men un- 
social, and so might fitly enough be called Unsocial 
Education. We need not, therefore, be surprised that 
iSmile never develops any social virtues other than 
those of the family and the kindly neighbor, never 
engages in any social, economic, or political reforms, 
and never looks upon social duties except as obtruding 
evils that, in a culture-perverted life, must be borne 
with Stoic indifference or resignation. 

1 See Homer, Odyssey, Bk. IX., 112 sqq. 

2 He has rare glimpses of a better view ; but they do not last. 
See p. 200. 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 219 

If, owing to his defective character and acquire- 
ments, Rousseau's educational system is mainly false 
in presvippositions and aims, it is still more so in 
method. To train a being whose nature is essentially 
inoral, and whose life, in so far as moral, must consist 
in relations and dealings with free, intelligent beings, 
by the laws of brute necessity and force, with the 
view of imparting to him the freedom of an automa- 
ton, is surely the height of absurdity, and the author 
of another volume in this series is entirely justified in 
calling the attempt " a scheme as fantastic as ever en- 
tered the wayward mind of a madman — to separate 
tlie child from his fellows, and set him in a wilder- 
ness."^ This scheme had its origin, partly in Rous- 
seau's character, which was essentially unsocial and 
impatient of moral regulation, and partly in his false 
notions of the origin and uses of society. To be sure, 
if one does not care to learn to swim, he need not go 
into the water; but if he does wish, he has no choice. 
So, if we wish a child to make his way safely in 
society, we must bring him up in society, familiarize 
him with its laws, usages, and meaning, and train his 
will to relate itself freely to the freedom of other 
wills. To make brute force the sole means of his edu- 
cation is to dehumanize him, to make him an outcast 
from the hour of his birth. If, in spite of such treat- 
ment, his human nature still asserts itself, it will be 
in an altogether undeveloped form. The child will 
be a dependent cry-baby and stupid dupe at the age 
of sixteen, and as such, indeed, Emile is presented 
to us. Moreover, since utter subjection to the control 
1 Bowen, Froebel, p. 4. 



220 EOUSSEAU 

of necessity cuts off all possibility of control by self, 
and leaves tlie cbild entirely determined from with- 
out, he will have to be watched and tended all the 
days of his life, and, in case of need, subjected to un- 
blushing tyranny, as we fi.nd Eraile to have been. He 
never learns to distinguish between slavery and free- 
dom, for the simple reason that he never has any ex- 
perience of the latter. When one cannot tell slavery 
from freedom, there is no heroism in bearing it,^ and 
no motive to throw it off. Men with Emile's princi- 
ples would accept slavery and oppression with Stoic 
indifference, or else revert to savagery; and the 
struggle for concrete freedom, that is, freedom with 
a content of social relations, as distinct from negative 
freedom without relations, would come to an end. 

But, besides all these defects of presuppositions, 
ideals, and method inherent in Rousseau's system, it 
is chargeable with three others which are fatal : (1) it 
is exclusive, (2) it is impracticable, and (3) it is 
immoral. 

In the world for which Rousseau, however incon- 
sistently, paved the way, all education must be univer- 
sal, accessible to every human being, as such, without 
distinction of class or sex. Now, Rousseau's system 

1 To regard indiscriminating apathy as moral heroism, or to look 
for peace through the hlunting of sensibilities, is the height of 
absurdity. Cf. Macbeth, IV., 3: 

Malcolm. Dispute it like a man. 
Macduff. I shall do so ; 

But I must also feel as a man. 

This is the true heroism, and the only one that is compatible with 
social life or individual nobility. It is a chief task of education to 
cultivate keenness of feeling. 



EOUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 221 

never laid claim to any such universality. He main- 
tains that the poor have no need of education (see 
p. 106 n.), and considers only the rich and well born. 
His system is, therefore, essentially exclusive, aristo- 
cratic, and plutocratic, an education for kindly coun- 
try squires, or rural patriarchs, living in the midst of 
thralls or serfs. But, even as exclusive, it is utterly 
impracticable. It would be impossible to find a man 
willing to devote the twenty-five best years of his life, 
without reward, to the education of one child, even if 
that child were his own; and, if he could be found, 
his self-sacrifice, and his renunciation of all social 
relations and duties, for the sake of one who might 
not live, or might not develop, to justify his efforts, 
would be an insane act. The world would not make 
much progress, if every child required the exclusive 
services of a tutor for five and twenty years, and, even 
at the end of that time, had not learnt to guide his 
own life. Again, unless desert islands could be pro- 
duced at will, the isolation demanded by the system 
is impossible. Indeed, we do not find that Rousseau 
can dispense with society. His Emile attends fairs, 
ice-cream parties, and banquets, and runs races for 
cakes with other children; and such experiences are 
shown to be necessary parts of his education. In all 
this, Eousseau forgot himself. Lastly, a system 
which uses, as its sole motive, self-interest, and that 
too, frequently in low forms ; which estimates actions 
by their actual, instead of their intended, conse- 
quences, and which continually practises pious fraud 
and dupery, in order to reach its ends, surely deserves 
to be called immoral. And its acknowledged result 



222 ROUSSEAU 

upon Emile, who never rises to the dignity of a ra- 
tional, self-determining personality, freely relating 
himself to a society of free personalities, but always 
remains the victim of a sensuous, capricious, selfish 
Epicureanism, dashed with fitful blotches of gloomy, 
fatalistic, despairing Stoicism, crying, like a spoilt 
child, at one moment, and posing as a Prometheus 
Bound the next, fully bears out this judgment. 

Gathering up, in one glance, the various defects of 
E-ousseau's social and pedagogical theories, we can 
now see clearly the false assumption that lay at the 
bottom of them all. It is a very common and wide- 
spread error, and is fatal wherever it occurs. It con- 
sists in assuming- that the later and higher stages in 
evolution are to be explained by the laws that mani- 
fest themselves in the earlier and lower, and must be 
made to square with these. It throws forward the 
darkness of the earlier upon the later, instead of cast- 
ing back the light of the later upon the earlier. Thus 
it continually tries to explain human nature by the 
laws manifested in sub-human nature, and insists that 
man should go back and allow himself to be governed 
by the necessary ^ laws of the latter, — o/xoXoyovfx.ww'i 
Trj (j)vcr€L, as the fatalistic Stoics said. This is the 
sum and substance of Rousseau's teaching in soci- 
ology, ethics, and pedagogy; it is the sum and sub- 
stance of much popular teaching in all departments 
of theory and practice to this day. And yet nothing 

1 It is hardly necessary to say, in these days, that the notion of 
necessity corresponds to no fact that we know. Nature reveals 
regularity, but not necessity. See Huxley, Muterialisiii and Ideal- 
ism, in Collected E.ssa[/s, Vol. I. 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 223 

could be more misleading, more fatal to progress. 
The acorn does not explain the oak, but the oak the 
acorn. The meaning of the acorn is revealed in the 
oak, and the meaning of Nature in Culture. " Nature," 
Professor James tells us, " reveals no spiritual intent." 
Of course it does not, so long as you arbitrarily ex- 
clude from Nature its highest manifestations; but in- 
clude these, and you will see that they are what all 
Nature has been tending toward from all eternity. 
In a word, Culture is the meaning, or intent, of Nature, 
and we shall never know the full meaning of the first 
and lowest step in existence till the last and highest 
has been taken. Each to-day reveals the meaning 
of all yesterdays, and contains the free promise of 
all to-morrows. The problem of life is, not to make 
man live according to Nature, but to make Nature live 
according to man, or, in less ambitious phrase, to ele- 
vate the "natural" into the "spiritual" man, blind 
instinct into rational freedom. Rousseau's system, 
therefore, exactly inverts the order of Nature and 
progress ; it advocates the descent, not the ascent, of 
man.^ 

To sum up: In so far as Rousseau laid bare the 
defects and abuses of the society and education of his 
time, and demanded reforms in the direction of truth 
and simplicity, he did excellent work; but, when he 
came to tell how such reforms were to be accom- 
plished, he propounded a system which, from a social 

1 Aristotle, who never falls into the common error, calls the oak, 
as the meaning of the acorn, the what-it-was-ness (t6 ri fjv eivai) 
of it. We say of the acorn, when we see the oak that has sprung 
from it, " Oh, that's what it was!" The republic of free spirits is 
the what-it-was-nsss of the lowest form of life. 



224 ROUSSEAU 

and moral point" of view, has hardly one redeeming 
feature, and which is frequently in glaring contradic- 
tion with itself. It is pure Romanticism. 

In spite of this, it has been given to few men to 
exert, with their thought, an influence so deep and 
pervasive as that of Rousseau. Tliis influence, due to 
the fact that he took the " motions " which were " toil- 
ing in the gloom " of the popular mind of his time, 
and made them flash, with the lurid lightning of his 
own passion, before the eyes of an astonished world, 
extended to all departments of human activity — phi- 
losophy, science, religion, art, politics, ethics, eco- 
nomics, and pedagogy. 

In Philosophy this influence is very marked. Kant 
has told us that he was " roused from his dogmatic 
slumber " by Hume, and this is true ; but, after he 
was roused, he drew his chief inspiration from Rous- 
seau.' The germinal thought of the Critique of the 
Pare Reason, expressed in its opening sentence, is to 
be found in JtJmile, Bk. IV. ^ ''These comparative 
ideas, greater, less, as well as the numerical ideas, 
one, two, etc, are certainly not sensations, though the 
mind produces them only on the occasion of sensa- 
tions " — the Critical Philosophy is but a generaliza- 
tion of this. We have already seen that Kant's three 
" Postulates of the Pure Reason " — God, Freedom, 
and Immortality^ — are simply Rousseau's three fun- 



1 He is said never to have omitted his afternoon walk hut once, 
and that was when he got absorbed in The New Heloise. It is 
difficult to understand this nowadays. 

2 Savoyard Vicar's Confession of Faith. 

3 See p. 166, and cf . Prologue to Tennyson's In Memoriam. 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 225 

daiuental tenets of natural religion. Kant's ethical 
rigorism, with its ungrounded "categorical impera- 
tive," owes much to Rousseau's spasmodic Stoicism; 
while his theory of taste, as laid down in his Critique 
of the Power of Judgment, clearly has its roots in 
Rousseau's definition of taste. ^ It is hardly an exag- 
geration, therefore, to say that Kant, in his three 
Critiques, does little more than present, in philo- 
sophic garb, the leading doctrines of Rousseau. But, 
as has already been shown, Rousseau had occasional 
glimpses of truth that lay altogether beyond Kant's 
range of vision.'^ Through Kant, Rousseau's philo- 
sophic influence passed into all German, and thence 
into all modern, philosophy, as could easily be shown. 
Even the latest developments. Agnosticism and Phi- 
lopistism,' can be traced back, through Kant's 
unknowable "thing-in-itself," and undemonstrable 
"postulates," to Rousseau's emotional subjectivism. 
The result of Rousseau's influence upon philosophy 
has been to discredit human reason, to replace it by 
infectious emotion, and to pave the way for a return 
to obscurantism and superstition.^ 

1 See p. 175. 2 gge above, p. 85, note. 

3 I cannot think of any better compound to express the irrational 
" wil]-to-believe "-ism of such recent writers as Druraraond, Bal- 
four, Kidd, and James. See Cecil's Pseudo-Philosophy at the End 
of the Nineteenth Century. It is needless to say that Agnosticism 
and Pliilopistism are respectively but the emotionally pessimistic 
and optimistic aspects of one fact, the despair, on the part of 
reason, of solving its own problems — a despair originally born of 
Rousseau's intellectual sloth. 

■* See the quotation from Goethe, on p. 113. Goethe, as we shall 
see, overcame the influence of Rousseau. He puts many of his 
teachings, almost verbatim, into the mouth of Mephistopheles, and 
of Faust in his dark days. 



226 ROUSSEAU 

The same thing is true of his influence upon Science, 
although this, thanks to the fact tliat science, wiser 
than philosophy, takes due account of the sensuous 
content of thought, has been less marked. The re- 
sults of science are proof against emotional prejudice, 
and take no notice of contempt. It was specially 
to Hegel and his school that this part of Rousseau's 
influence passed. Hegel spoke with undisguised con- 
tempt of physical science, and constructed philoso- 
phies of religion, right, art, etc., out of his own brain 
— philosophies wliich science has silently converted 
into warning examples. His thought has almost 
been forgotten in the land of its birth, and many 
of his works have never had the honor of a second 
edition. 

In Religion, Rousseau's influence has been incalcu- 
lable, supplementing, and, in some ways, counteract- 
ing, that of Voltaire. While Voltaire and his followers 
were applying a robust, but rather coarse, common 
sense to the ancient word-castles of religious dogma, 
and reducing them to heaps of crumbling ruins, Rous- 
seau was trying to construct a simple cottage out of a 
few moth-eaten sticks rescued from the general wreck, 
by covering over with a thin papering of varnished 
sentiment. The result was the Savoyard Vicar's 
Confession of Faith, a frail enough structure, not fit 
for human habitation, save in the mildest weather. 
It, nevertheless, proved widely attractive at a time 
when men, having lost faith, not only in religion, but 
also in reason, as interpreters of life, were fain to 
look to sentiment and romance for help. Rousseau's 
emotional faith became the religion of many men in 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 227 

Ids own time, of a large party among the French revo- 
lutionists, — Robespierre, St. Just, etc., — and of mil- 
lions of pious but uncritical souls afterwards. It 
contributed important elements to the Neo-Catholic re- 
naissance in the Latin countries, and to the Protestant 
reaction in the Germanic, as well as to English and 
American XJnitarianism. It is the determining ele- 
ment in the extensive theological movements initiated 
by Schleiermacher and Ritschl, and is perpetuated in 
thousands of learned books down to our own time, 
when it forms the chief element in religion, taking 
the place of dogma, and so bidding defiance to the 
results of criticism, "higher" and lower. Thanks, 
in great part, to Eousseau, religion has, in our time, 
become a matter, not of spiritual insight and settled 
conviction, which in their nature are universal, but 
rather of sentiment and emotion, which are necessarily 
individual. It was a great misfortune for France, as 
well as for the world, that, when changes in life and 
developments in science made a new attitude in regard 
to religion necessary, the matter should have fallen 
into the hands of two such men as Voltaire and Rous- 
seau, who, being equally without profound knowledge, 
philosophical acumen, and moral firmness, were utterly 
unfitted to deal worthily Avith it. The one pulled 
down with the tools of scornful wit and insidious per- 
siflage; the other built up with the nervous, ineffective 
hands of romantic sentiment and dalliant emotion. 
The result has been, on the one hand, an irrational, 
paralyzing scepticism, and, on the other, an enfee- 
bling, voluptuous mysticism, both eqiially favorable 
to superstition and to neglect of moral life. Between 



228 ROUSSEAU 

these France has been suffering depletion and exhaus- 
tion for over a hundred years. 

In Art, and especially in Literature, Rousseau's 
influence has, from his own days to ours, been 
almost paramount throughout Christendom. Indeed, 
modern art and literature, with their fondness for the 
picturesque, the natural, the rural, the emotionally 
religious, the analysis of sentiment, and the interplay 
of passions, and their rebellion against the stiff and 
the conventional, may almost be said to date from 
Rousseau. There is no room here to trace his foot- 
steps in the studiedly rural cottages and picturesque, 
half- wild parks, so common in Europe and America; 
in the landscape paintings, genre-pictures, and pict- 
ures of pathetic or religious emotion, that fill our gal- 
leries ; or in the nature groups and sentimentally posed 
figures that delight the majority of our sculptors ; but 
we must follow them here and there in the paths of 
literature, on which they are everywhere to be found, 
in France, in Germany, in England, in Italy, in 
Greece, in Scandinavia, in Russia. As to French 
literature, in the last hundred years, it is soaked in 
Rousseau's teaching from beginning to end. Its form 
and its matter are alike due to him. Its simplicity, 
its clear and effective style, its frequent glittering 
superficiality, its morbid pathos and insincere virtue, 
its outspokenness and lubricity are among its debts 
to him. Bernardin de St. Pierre and Madame de 
Stael; Lamartine and De Vigny; Chateaubriand and 
Montalembert; Saintaine and De Maistre; Merimee 
and Michelet; De Musset and George Sand; Victor 
Hugo and Balzac ; Dumas and Eugene Sue ; Souvestre 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 229 

andDeSenancour; Cousin and Renan; Taine and Ste. 
Beuve ; Bourget and Zola ; Coppee and Loti ; Gautier 
and Amiel, with hundreds more, are all his disciples. 
He is the parent alike of the Neo-Christians and the 
decadents; of the romanticists and the realists. It 
may be added that his influence has been far greater 
than Voltaire's. 

AVhen Ave turn to German literature, we find almost 
the same condition of things. The Storm-and-Stress 
Period in Germany was mainly due to the ferment 
caused by Rousseau's teaching. It affected her 
greatest geniuses, GcEthe and Schiller, Koerner and 
Von Kleist. Goethe, at first, completely suocvimbed 
to it, as we see from such works as the Triumph of 
Sentimentality and the Sorrorvs of Young Werther; but 
his strong nature in time threw it off, and turned to 
a healthy classicism. Nevertheless, its traces appear 
in all his works, especially in his lyrics, many of 
which Rousseau, had he been an artist, might have 
written. And, after all, Faust is only a grown-up 
Emile, breaking away from faith and culture, and 
entrusting himself to a bad tutor; while Wilhelm 
Meister is an Emile with no tutor at all. Schiller' 
was still more deeply and permanently influenced. 
His lyrics are full of Rousselian "Nature," pathos, 
and emotional religiosity, while his Robbers, that 
chaotic drama of wild revolt, might have been written 
by Rousseau. Indeed, Rousseau's lachrymose senti- 
mentality and emotional prodigality seized upon the 
German people, like an epidemic, and long affected, 
for the most part injuriously, both its life and its 
literature. We can trace them in Koerner and Kotze- 



230 ROUSSEAU 

bue; in the Von Kleists and Sclilegels; in the 
Humboldts and Grimins; in Fichte and Schelling; 
in Novalis and Kichter; in Heine and Eueckert; 
in Lenau and Phaten ; in Frey tag and Auerbach ; in 
Heyse and Spielhagen ; in Fanny Lewald and Johanna 
Ambrosius, and in many more. 

In England, Rousseau's influence upon literature, 
though all-pervasive, was, in the main, beneficial. 
The English bee sucked the honey and rejected the 
poison, for the most part, only becoming occasionally 
dizzy with the opium of nature-mysticism. Under 
the influence of Rousseau, the poets of Great Britain 
broke away from the monotonous, aphoristic stilted- 
ness of Pope and his school, and returned to "Nature " 
and simplicity. Burns, whose debt to Rousseau was 
very great, and Lady Nairne led the way. They were 
followed by Keats, ^ Shelley, and Byron; Southey, 
Coleridge, and Wordsworth;^ Leigh Hunt and the 



1 Keats came nearer to Rousseau, in intensity of feeling for 
Nature, than any other man, and he ^yas of finer texture. 

2 Wordsworth, "that uttered nothing base," was, in all but 
moral infirmity, a thorough-going disciple of Rousseau. He even 
followed him in his mystic feeling for Nature, and his confusion of 
the tenderly emotional with the ethical. Hence such sheer nonsense 
as this : — 

" One impulse from a vernal wood 
May teach you more of man, 
Of moral evil and of good, 
Tban all the sages can." 

If this be true, let us abandon all sages and all books, and sit at the 
feet of some " vernal wood " ! Wordsworth is full of such beguiling 
untruths. What, for example, could be more untrue than that " the 
child is father of the man," or that " our birth is but a sleep and a 
forgetting " ? His whole emotional pantheism, so dear to sensuous 
dalliers, is Rousselian and immoral to the core. 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 231 

Brownings ; Carlyle and Euskin ; ^ Clough and Tenny- 
son; Morris and Swinburne; Dickens and Thackeray; 
George Eliot and Mrs. Ward. On the other side of 
the Atlantic, they were followed by Longfellow and 
Lowell; Whittier and Emerson. Apart from Ameri- 
can differences, the last is the most loyal disciple that 
llousseau ever had. His patriarchal country life 
came as near as possible to Eousseau's highest ideal. 
And their whole view of the world, and of their rela- 
tions to it, were very much the same. Both loved 
Nature, and felt inexpressible mystic meanings in it; 
both preferred solitude, and felt that society was in 
conspiracy against the freedom of the individual; 
both were pantheists and, in theory. Stoics. Emer- 
son's essay on Self-reliance would have delighted 
Eousseau. Both avoided social ties and political life. 
Both believed that man is essentially good, and will 
develop best, if left to give free expression to his 
spontaneity. Both believed in an Oversoul, of which 
man is merely a partaker, and to which he ought to 
lay himself open in passive receptivity. Both scorned 
consistency, and sought to draw the most from each 
passing mood. Both were averse to consecutive, logi- 
cal thought and sustained scientific inquiry. And the 
list of resemblances might be added to indefinitely. 
But Emerson was a Puritan. 

Italian literature did not escape the universal con- 
tagion. The writings of Leopardi and Foscolo; Man- 
zoni and D'Azeglio; Carducci and Costanzo; Rapisardi 

1 The resemblance of these two men, in different ways, to Rous- 
seau is very remarkable. The one inherited his contempt for civili- 
zation, the other his love of Nature. 



232 ROUSSEAU 

and D'Annunzio, not to mention Ada Negri and many 
otliers, are all more or less inspired by Rousseau. 
There is no room to speak of the literatures of 
Greece, Scandinavia, and Russia; but Avhat is true 
of the others is equally true of them. Ibsen, for 
example, is Rousselian to the core, in his contempt 
for society and its hollow, soul-corrupting conven- 
tions. 

It is almost superfluous to speak of Rousseau's in- 
fluence on Politics, practical and theoretical. He is 
the father of Democracy. The French Revolution 
was, in very large degree, his work. While repres- 
sive respect for authority in life and thought was 
relinquishing its hold, under the inexorable lash of 
Voltaire's bitter tongue, Rousseau was passionately 
calling upon the men, thus set free, to rise up, cast off 
their loosened chains, and claim the freedom with 
which God and Nature had endowed them, and live 
thenceforth in "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity." 
His passion prevailed, and France rose in blind fury, 
bathed herself in blood, and lighted a conflagration 
that burnt for thirty years. When, at last, it was 
quenched in blood, Europe hardly recognized herself. 
She looked the same ; but she felt that she was not 
the same. Authority, in the old sense, had been 
burnt away, and a green crop of freedom was spring- 
ing up in its place. What this meant, neither France 
nor the other nations of Europe have yet learnt; but 
they are learning. And they are learning also that 
most important of all social lessons, that no revolution, 
inspired by such irreverent and passionate motives as 
those furnished by Voltaire and Rousseau, can fail 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 233 

to bring destruction and woe, which only the gentle, 
slow-moving hand of Reason can wipe away. 

If the American Revolution was due to the spirit of 
liberty inherent in the English peoi)le, the formulas in 
f which the Declaration of Independence was couched 
were largely drawn from Rousseau. When its framers 
demanded " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness " 
for every citizen, they were speaking in his language. 
Their calmer natures, formed for political freedom, 
enabled them to avoid his sentimental exaggerations, 
and to make provision for it; but his influence helped 
to make them forget that every Declaration of Inde- 
pendence needs to be supplemental by a Declaration 
of Interdependence. As a result, we are too fond of 
political isolation, and too prone to individual isola- 
tion. As a people, we are slow to recognize our duties 
to other peoples ; as individuals, we are sadly deficient 
in public spirit, and in loyalty to what our constitu- 
tion stands for. The hand of the unsocial Rousseau 
is still heavy upon us, carrying us back to savagery. 

Upon Political Tlieory the effect of Rousseau's teach- 
ing has been so great that he may fairly be called the 
father of modern political science. Though that sci- 
ence, in its progress, has shown most of his positions 
to be baseless, it is none the less true that these have 
formed the centre of all political speculation for the 
last hundred years. He gave wrong answers to the 
questions which he propounded; but these questions 
were just the ones that required to be answered. The 
Social Contract does not lie at the beginning of social 
progress, but is the end to which it forever tends. 

Hovering between two equally immoral systems, 



234 ROUSSEAU 

Epicureanism and Stoicism, and having apparently no 
experience of free will, Eousseau developed no Ethical 
System. Nevertheless, his views were not without 
effect upon subsequent ethical theories. His notion 
that we have a sense for good, just as we have a sense 
for smell, — a notion which takes morality out of the 
region of reason and will altogether, — has found 
many followers among sentimentalists; while his doc- 
trine that man should not seek to rise above the laws 
of necessity,^ but remain an automaton, has found 
favor with all those who have sought to interpret 
Culture by Nature, instead of Nature by Culture. 
His insidious glorification of sensuous dalliance has, 
naturally, found a response in all dalliant natures. 

In the sphere of Economics, Eousseau's influence, 
though great, is quite different from what he expected. 
Though entirely averse to socialism and anarchism, 
he was in large degree the parent of both. They 
arose from the spirit of his teaching, rather than 
from his teaching itself. In his remarkable article 
on Political Economy, written for the Encyclopedie, he 
points out the danger of looking upon society as an 
organism, most strongly defends the rights of private 
property, and justifies the State in imposing taxes. 
"It is certain," he says, "that the right of property 
is the most sacred of all the rights of the citizens, 
more important in certain aspects than liberty itself, 
whether because it is more closely connected with the 
preservation of life, or because property, being more 
easy to usurp, and more difficult to defend, than per- 
son, ought to be more carefully respected, or, finally, 
1 Cf . Faust, Prologue in Heaven, lines 39-50. 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 235 

because property is the true foundation of civil life, 
and the true warrant for the obligations of citizens; 
for, if property were not responsible for persons, 
nothing would be so easy as to elude one's duties and 
defy the laws." . . . "The first thing which the 
founder of a commonwealth has to do, after laying 
down laws, is to find a fund sufficient for the support 
of magistrates and other officers, and for all public 
expenses. This fund is called cerarium or Jisc, if 
it is in money ; public domain, if it is in land ; and 
for obvious reasons, the latter is far preferable to the 
former." . . . "A public domain is the surest and 
most honest of all means of providing for the needs 
of the state." Though holding this, he does not ob- 
ject to taxation, merely insisting that it shall not be 
imposed except by a vote of the people. But, when 
he inveighs, with bitter scorn, against the venality 
and corruption of public officials, and maintains that 
" it is one of the most important functions of govern- 
ment to prevent extreme inequalities of fortune, not 
by taking accumulated wealth away from its posses- 
sors, but by depriving them of the means to accumu- 
late it; and not by building hospitals for the poor, 
but by guaranteeing citizens against the chance of 
becoming such," he accepts the fundamental principle 
of socialism, which naturally calls forth its opposite, 
anarchism ; and principles have a vitality far beyond 
the will and intent of him who propounds them. 
Moreover, Rousseau's Stoicism is virtual socialism, 
while his Epicureanism is virtual anarchism, as could 
easily be shown. It ought to be added that one of the 
noblest and most conspicuous traits in Rousseau's 



236 ROUSSEAU 

character was unfailing sympathy with the poor and 
oppressed, involving hatred of their oppressors ; and 
it is this sympathy and this hatred, which his example 
did much to make common, that have, respectively, 
caused the socialistic and anarchistic movements of 
this century. 

Finally, in Education, the influence of Eousseau has 
been powerful beyond measure. He may fairly be 
called the father of modern pedagogy, even despite 
the fact that most of his positive teachings have had 
to be rejected. Comenius, Locke, and others had, 
indeed, done good work before him ; but it was he that 
first, with his fiery rhetoric, made the subject of edu- 
cation a burning question, and rendered clear its con- 
nection with all human welfare. The whole gospel 
of modern education lies in such passages as this: 
" It is from the first moment of our lives that we ought 
to learn to deserve to live ; and as, at our birth, we 
share in the rights of citizens, the moment of our 
birth ought to be the beginning of the exercise of our 
rights. If there are laws for man's estate, there ought 
to be laws for children, teaching them to obey others ; ^ 
and, seeing that we do not leave each man's private 
reason to be sole judge of his duties, we ought to be 
all the more reluctant to hand over to the notions and 
prejudices of fathers the education of their children, 
that it affects the State more than it does them." It 
would have been well had Rousseau clung firmly to 
these ideas. 

Of Eousseau 's educational demands, perhaps only 

1 It is needless to note that this teaching is utterly at variance 
with that advanced in Einile. 



KOUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 237 

three have been responded to: (1) the demand that 
children should, from the moment of their birth, be 
allowed complete freedom of movement ; (2) that they 
should be educated through direct experience, and 
not through mere information derived from books; 
(3) that they should be taught to use their hands in 
the production of useful articles. But certain others 
of his notions lingered on for a time, much to the 
detriment of education, and were with difficulty shaken 
off. It is needless to say that his doctrines influenced 
all subsequent educators. 

Among these the first important and influential 
name is that of his countryman Pestalozzi. This 
genial saint undertook to reduce to practice what 
Rousseau had preached, and even went so far as to 
isolate his own son for that purpose. Having discov- 
ered the folly of this and, therewith, the futility of 
Rousseau's exclusive education, and being moved with 
pity for the condition of the laboring classes, sunk in 
helpless ignorance, he set about evolving a plan 
whereby this ignorance might be removed and the 
poor rendered self-helpful. Thus his sympathy for 
the common people led him to a course altogether dif- 
ferent from that recommended by Rousseau, who held 
that the poor required no education. The truth was, 
that, though Pestalozzi started from the same point as 
Rousseau, their ideas of education were diametrically 
opposed. Rousseau regarded education merely as a 
means of protecting its subjects from the corruptions 
of civilization, and securing for them as much as pos- 
sible of their natural liberty, whereas Pestalozzi 
looked upon it as a means of enabling men to live a 



238 EOUSSEAU 

social and moral life. But, as has often been said, 
Pestalozzi was a sentimental philanthropist, rather 
than a philosophic educator. He was more anxious 
that his pupils should learn to make an honest living 
than that they should be harmoniously developed 
spiritual beings, and hence he directed his chief 
efforts to the former end. He responded to Rous- 
seau's three demands, and followed him in his emo- 
tional religiosity; but he developed no educational 
principles or metliods, based upon the nature and ends 
of the child. His crowning merit lay in seeing that 
nothing can help the people but education, and in 
demanding that this should be made universal. His 
example, too, inspired others to do what he could not. 
Among these others, the most notable and effective 
were Herbart (177C-1841) and Froebel (1782-1852). 

Herbart, a philosopher who, having revolted from 
the formalism of Kant, had betaken himself to the 
study of psychology, was, apparently, just the man 
to supply what Pestalozzi had omitted, and, indeed, 
in his own way, he did so. Setting out with a meta- 
physical, somewhat Leibnizian, conception of the soul, 
as a monad, he tried to show by what process, in its 
endeavor to preserve its existence against other 
monads, continually impinging upon it and invading 
it, it gradually, through successive "apperceptions," 
built up that complex of ideas which made its world 
rational, and enabled it to lead a moral life. Such 
life, in active relation with sub-human nature and 
with society, he conceived to be the end of all educa- 
tion. In this he was undoubtedly right, and his sys- 
tem may almost be said to be diametrically opposed to 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 239 

that of Rousseau. Unfortunately, his academic for- 
malism and want of experience betrayed him into 
a metaphysic that was purely fanciful, having no 
foundation either in dialectic or in experience, and 
into a psychology that was to the last degree mathe- 
matical, materialistic, and mechanical. Ideas are 
treated as forces which may be compounded, and 
whose mechanical relations and resultants may be 
stated in mathematical formulas. With such notions 
he could, of course, arrive at no conception of a free 
will or any true morality.^ To him will is nothing 
more than the mechanical resultant of his idea-forces.* 
But, in spite of these serious drawbacks, which tend 
to make education a mere mechanical process, Her- 
bart's contributions to the science of pedagogy were 
most valuable and lasting, 

Froebel, the prince of modern educators, may be 
said to have been a pupil of Pestalozzi's. He, too, 
undertook to do what the latter had omitted, namely, 
to work out a system of pedagogical theory and prac- 
tice, based upon the facts of human nature, and cal- 
culated to enable it to reach its fullest realization. 
Being an ardent student, and somewhat dreamy lover, 
of sub-human nature, he was, like Rousseau, prone to 
a kind of mystical nature-pantheism, which seri- 
ously interfered with the effect of his work, tending 
to render it sentimental, instead of rigorously scien- 

1 This comes out, with striking clearness, in his notion of re- 
quital, which he thinks is an ethical one. See De Garmo, Herbart 
(in this series), p. 52 ; cf . p. 56. 

2 Herbart's psychology has found many disciples, Lazarus, Stein- 
thal, Fechner, Wundt, etc. ; and a Frenchman, M. Fouillee, has 
written a book entitled Les idees-forces. 



240 ROUSSEAU 

tific. This trait has communicated itself to many of 
his followers and done much mischief. In spite of 
this, Proebel did more than any other man to work 
out a scheme for the gradual, orderly, and healthy 
development of the powers of the child, with a view 
to rendering him a social and moral being, a worthy 
member of the commonwealth of men and of the eter- 
nal kingdom of God. Like Herbart, Froebel held that 
a moral life was the end of all education. 

Alongside Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Froebel, must be 
mentioned, among the disciples of Rousseau, a man 
far less known than they, but well deserving of care> 
ful study by all educators — Antonio Rosmini-Serbati 
(1797-1855).^ This eminent thinker, one of the 
greatest of the century, derived his knowledge of 
Rousseau mainly through the writings of Madame 
Necker de Saussure, which he greatly admired. Pro- 
tected by his Catholicism from pantheism, and entirely 
free from sentimentalism, Rosmini elaborated a scheme 
of education on the basis of his own philosophy. Ac- 
cording to this, the human soul is a substantial feeling, 
rendered intelligent by having presented to it, as ob- 
ject, ideal, or universal and undetermined, being. 
This is at first the sole object and constituent of its 
consciousness. In the process of experience, the 
"fundamental feeling," which constitutes the subjec- 
tive aspect of the soul, is modified and, at the same 
time, the indefinite object, being, is determined. In 
this way there gradually arises in the soul a world of 

1 See Father Lockhart's Life, and the briefer Life prefixed to 
my translation of Rosmini's Philosophical System (London, Kegan 
Paul), 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 243 

feeling, referred to being, as substance and cause.^tajjj 
proportion as this being is defined through feeling^i^^gj. 
see the truth, or God ; for ideal being is but God ^^^y 
defined. Since all reality is feeling, and all idealiu. 
God unrealized, morality consists in so ordering our 
feelings that they shall gradually define God for us, 
and thus make us partakers in the Beatific Vision. 
However strange and mediaeval this spiritual mysti- 
cism may seem, it enabled Rosmini to work out a 
scheme for the orderly development of a divine world 
in the consciousness of the child — a scheme which 
has very great value, even for those who cannot accept 
its presuppositions, being superior to those of Herbart 
and Froebel in many important particulars. Unfortu- 
nately, it breaks off at the end of the fifth year of 
the child's life ; ^ and we cannot but regret that a man 
so eminently fitted, by natural temperament, education, 
and psychological and philosophic insight, for peda- 
gogical research, should not have been spared to com- 
plete his work. 

To give an account of all the educators that have 
been influenced by the teaching of Rousseau would 
be to write the history of modern pedagogy. Enough 
has already been said to show the nature and extent 
of that influence, and to show how it has been modi- 
fied and, in very large measure, counteracted. 

As one reads iJmile, he is sometimes tempted to 
believe that Rousseau wrote it merely to maintain a 
thesis which he did not believe, but wished to see dis- 

1 Besides the (incomplete) work above referred to (p. 110 n.), 
there is a volume of essays on Pedagogics by Rosmini, parts of 
which well deserve to be translated. 



240 ROUSSEAU 

tific. lij and threw it down, as a gauntlet, to challenge 
his frld which had lost all real interest in education, 
thip compel it to defend, if it could, its own practice. 
01V hether so intended or not, this has certainly been 
the effect of the book. It has made men attempt to 
defend existing systems of education, and, finding that 
they could not, resolve and endeavor to discover better 
ones. And better ones have been discovered. We are 
gradually gaining light with regard to the nature and 
capacities of the child, and getting a clearer insight 
into the means by which they may be unfolded, and 
the destiny to which they tend. We now know that, 
instead of being an unreflective and immoral automaton 
up to the age of puberty,^ he exercises intelligence and 
conscience — in rudimentary forms, indeed — from the 
hour of his birth. And so we conclude that he is to 
be governed from the first, not by the law of neces- 
sity, but by that of freedom and righteous love. 

But, for all this, there is still much to be done in 
the sphere of education. We have, even now, no sci- 
entific theory of pedagogy, and the reason is that we 
have no scientific theory of human nature. We are 
still distracted and blinded to the truth, on the one 
hand, by certain traditional conceptions that once 
formed part of a view of the world-economy, long since 
rendered unbelievable and obsolete, and on the other 
by certain modern philosophic prejudices, of a dualistic 
sort, for which Kant is in the main responsible. The 
former make us still inclined to believe that the soul 
is a created substance, beyond the reach of experience, 
a transcendental monad possessed of certain fixed fac- 

1 Herbart wrote essays on the freedom of the will at fourteen. 



ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE 243 

ulties, and capable of being trained only in a certain 
definite direction to a fore-appointed end. The latter 
make us believe that it is a bundle of categories, empty 
thought-forms, existing prior to all sensation or ex- 
perience, and conditioning it. In either case, we are 
irrationally induced to regard, and to talk about, the 
soul as something other than what by experience,^ the 
only source of true knowledge, we know it to be, and 
thus to build our educational theories upon a mere 
chimera. There is not one fact in our experience going 
to show that the soul is either a substance or a bundle 
of categories. Indeed, when subtly considered, these 
words are absolutely without meaning. When we ask 
what we knoiv the soul to be, we can only answer : A 
sentient desire, or desiderant feeling, which, through 
its own effort after satisfaction, gradually differentiates 
itself into a world, or, which is the same thing, gradu- 
ally learns to refer its satisfactions to a world of things 
in time and space. Feeling is primary ; ideas, or differ- 
entiations in feeling, are secondary — exactly the con- 
trary of what Herbart believed. The world that we 
know, whether material or spiritual, is entirely made 
up of feeling differentiated by ideas. The end of edu- 
cation, therefore,, can be none other than the complete 
satisfaction of feeling, by an ever-increasing harmoni- 
ous, that is, unitary, differentiation of it into a world 
of sources of satisfaction. This satisfaction will be 
greater in proportion as the sources are more numer- 
ous and richer. Hence, every soul will be consulting 

1 This does not mean merely what is called " seuse-experience," 
but includes all the intelligible phenomena of consciousness, even 
metaphysical ones. 



244 ROUSSEAU 

for its own satisfaction, by doing its best to satisfy 
every other soul, and to make it as rich as possible. 
Thus the most perfect egoism will be found to be one 
with the most perfect altruism, and the law of virtue 
to be one with the law of blessedness, as, in the end 
it must be, unless all existence be a mockery. On 
this view of the soul, and on this alone, will it be 
possible to erect an intelligible and coherent structure 
of education, intellectual, affectional, and moral. 



BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Of the numerous editions of the works of Rousseau 
the best is that by Musset-Pathay (Paris, Dupont, 
1823), in twenty -three voluraes octavo. A serviceable 
edition is that published by Hachette, Paris, 1865, in 
duodecimo. 

The works of Rousseau which bear on the subject of 
education are these : — 

1. Has the ReestahUshment of the Sciences and Arts con- 
tributed to purify Morals ? with the Letter to M. Grimm, the 
Reply to the King of Poland, Reply to M. Bordes, and Letter 
on a New Refutation (published 1750 sq.). 

2. What is the Origin of Inequality among Men, and is it 
authorized by the Natural Laro ? (1754). 

3. The New Htloise (1761). 

4. The Social Contract (1762). 

5. lEmile {Vl%'l),Yi\ih. Emile and Sophie, or the Solitaries 
(written 1778). 

6. Letters to M. de Malesherbes (1762). 

7. Letters from the Mountain (1764). 

8. Political Economy (in the Encyclopedic'). 

9. Confessions (written 1766-70 ; published, Part I., 
1781; Part II., 1788). 

10. Reveries (written 1777-78). 

The following are the best works on Rousseau : — 

1. Musset-Pathay, Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de 
J.-J. Rousseau, Paris, 1821. 

2. Streckeisen-Moultou, Rousseau, ses Amis et ses 
Ennemis, Paris, 1865. 

245 



246 BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 

3. H. Beaudoin, La Vie et les OEuvres de J.-J. Rousseau, 
Paris, 1871. 

4. St. INIauc Girardin, /.-/. Rousseau, sa Vie et ses 
Qiluvres, Paris, 1875. 

5. John Morley, Rousseau, London and New York, 1891. 

6. Chuquet, /.-/. Rousseau, Paris, 1893. 

There is interesting information regarding Rousseau and 
his influence to be found in Plermann Hettner's Literaturge- 
schichte des XVIITten Jahrhunderts, Vol. If., pp. 431-517, 
and in H. Michel's L'lde'e de I 'Etat, pp. 37-45. 

Of Rousseau's £mile, there exist several English 
translations, two of them made in the author's life- 
time. The most accessible are these : — 

Rousseau's £mil€, or Treatise on Education. Abridged 
and annotated by William H. Payne, Ph.D., LL.D. New 
York: D. Appleton & Co., 1893. 

Rousseau's Emile, or Concerning Education. Extracts 
with an Introduction and Notes, by Jules Steeg. Boston: 
D. C. Heath & Co., 1885. 



INDEX 



Ab^lard, 5 note 2. 

Academies, 149, 176. 

Adolescence, 156 sqq. 

J<;schylus, 6 note 2. 

./Esthetic theory, 175. 

Agnosticism, 167 note 1, 225 note 2. 

Agriculture, 144. 

Agrippa, Menenius, 11 note 4. 

Al Ghazzali, 203. 

Alembert. See D'Alembert. 

Althusen, 20. 

Altruism, 244. 

American boy, 123. 

Animal food, 132 sq. 

Annecy, 36, 41. 

Anthropomorphism, 165. 

Antigone, 128 note. 

Antony, Mark, 25 note. 

Aquinas, Thomas, 203. 

Archimandrite, 42. 

Aristotle, 77, 89, 97, 223. 

Aristotle (Davidson), 79, 101 note 1, 

141 notes. 
Armenian costume, 66. 
Astronomy, 189 sqq. 
Automaton, 123. 

B 

Bab, the, 91. 
Bacon, Francis, 8. 
Balfour, Arthur, 225 note. 
Bellamy, Edward, 93. 
Bellegarde, Mdlle. de, 55. 
Berlin, 67. 
Berne, 66. 

Bienne, Lake of, 66. 
Blacksraithing, 141. 
Bodin, 20. 



Books, 133, 135, 142. 

Bossey, 29 sqq. 

Bossuet, Hist. Univ., 27. 

Bourgoin, 69. 

Bowen, H. C. {FrmbeV), 219. 

Boyhood, 137 sqq. 

Broglie, Mde. de, 52. 

Browning, Mrs., 6 note 1. 

Bryce, James, 4 note 1. 

Buddhist, 169. 

Burns, Robert, 145 note 2, 230. 

Burton {Hume), 159 note. 



Caesar, Julius, 25 note, 161 note. 

Cakes and candy, 129 note 2. 

Calais, 69. 

Calvinism, 15. 

Candy, 129 note 2, 131. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 231 note. 

Carpenter, Edward, 120 note. 

Carpentry, 144. 

Catechumens, Hospice of, 36. 

Categorical imperative, 194, 195 note, 

223. 
Cecil {Pseudo- Philosophy), lit note 

2. 
ChambSry, 44 sqq., 69. 
Character of Rousseau, 31, 71 sqq, 
Charles II., 15. 

Charmettes, Les, 45, 66, 187 note. 
Childhood, 113 sqq. 
Children, Rousseau's, 55, 105 note. 
Chivalry, 217. 
Cities, 196, 210. 
Clarke, Samuel, 166 sq, 
Comenius, 236. 
Common sense, 138. 
Commonwealth, 12. 



247 



248 



INDEX 



Condillac, Abb6, 47, 55. 

Confession of Faith. See Savoyard 

Vicar. 
Covfessions (Rousseau's), 8, 35, 88, 

41, 45, 60, 67, 68, 79, 105 note, 128 

note 1, 158 note 2, 177. 
Conflgnon, 36. 
Conti, Prince de, 65, 69. 
Contract, social, 10 eqq; 16 sqq. 
Corsica, 67. 
Country, 196. 

Criticism, Kantian, 167 note 1, 224. 
Critique of the Pure Redson, 224. 
Critique of Judgment, 225. 
Culture, 80, 98, 100, 102, 175, 218, 223, 

234. 
Curiosity, 189. 
Cyclopean freedom, 218. 

D 

D'Alembert, 56, 63, 63. 

Dalliers, 24. 

Dante, 3, 4 notes, 11 note 2, 101 note, 

etc. 
Darwin, Charles, 129 note 2. 
Davenport (Mr)., 68. 
Death of Eousseau, 70. 
Declaration of Independence, 233. 
De Garmo, Charles {Herhart), 239 

note. 
Denzinger {Enchiridion), 5 note 1. 
Derbyshire, 68. 
Descartes, 8, 45, 92 note, 164 note, 

168. 
Devin du Village, 59. 
Dialogues (Rousseau's), 70. 
Diderot, 51, 55 sqq., 63. 
Dijon, Academy of, 56, 81. 
Discourse on Progress of Arts, 56, 77. 
Discourse on Inequality, 66, 77, 83 

sqq. 
Doctor, 130 note 3. 
Dogma, 164, 182 sqq. 
Domain, public, 255. 
Dover, 69. 
Dress, change of, 59. 
Drummond, Henry, 255. 
Duclos, 174. 



E 
Economics, 234. 
Eden, 80. 

Education by nature, 102, 210, 236 sqq. 
Egoism, 244. 
Eliot, George, 169 note 1. 
Emerson, E. W., 151 note 1, 156, 210 

note, 231. 
^mile, 62 sqq., 70, 77, 97 sqq. 
Smile's travels, 195. 
Encyclopaedists, 63. 
Encyclopedie, 56. 
England, 67. 
English, the, 133. 
Epicureanism, 190, 215, 234 sq. 
:^pinay, Mde. d', 55, 61, 62. 
Equality, 9, 16. 
Ermenonville, 70 sq. 
Ethical system, Rousseau's, 234. 
Europeans, 196. 
Existence, social and moral, 214. 

F 

Fastidiousness, 109. 

Fa list. See Goethe. 

Fechner, 231 note. 

Feeling, 85 note, 91, 103 note, 158, 

213, ^43. 
Filmer, Sir Robert, 16. 
Fontenelle, 28,51. 
Form, sense of, 132. 
Fouillee, 239 note 2. 
Frederick the Great, 65 sq., 68. 
Freedom, 11, 18, 198, 220. 
French language, 176. 
Frcebel, 238 sqq. 



Gaime, Abb6, 38. 

Gatier, M., 40 and note. 

Gaures, the, 133. 

Generosity, 126. 

Geneva, and Lake, 26, 41, 60, 65. 

Gentlemanliness, 81, 217. 

Geograjihy, 180. 

Girls' education, 178 sqq. 

Girardin, M., 70. 

Gluttony, 132. 



INDEX 



249 



Goethe (Faust), 5 note 3, 7 note 2, 
24, 25 note, 50 wo/e, 104 note 1, 113, 
IIT note 1, 225 iioie 3, 229 ; ( Wilh. 
Meister), 225 note 3, 229. 

"Good Time," 120. 

Gouvon, Comte de, 38. 

Grammar, 133. 

Greek, 176. 

Grenoble, 69. 

Gretclien {Fa/usf), 50 note. 

Grimm, 63, 129 note 2. 

Grotius, Hugo, 20, 196 sq. 

H 

Habit, 108. 

Hamlet, 25 note. 

Handicraft, 145 and note 2. 

Hatch {Uihhert Lect.), 7 note 1. 

Hearing, 132. 

Hegel, 14»io?;e4, 211, 226. 

Helv6tius, 169. 

Herbart, 238, 242 sq. 

Ilerhart, De Garmo, 239 note 1. 

Herraes of Praxiteles, 216 sq. 

Hermitage, the, 60, 66. 

Herodotus, 161 note. 

Hiero's fountain, 39. 

History, 133, 153, 161 sq. 

Hobbes {Leviathan), 8 sqq., 77, 80, 

97, 100, 196 sq. 
Homer, 189, 218 note. 
Hooker, 14 note 3, 20, 77. 
Houdetot, Comtesse d', 55, 61. 
Humanists, 6. 
Hume, David, 67, 80 note, 103 note, 

159 note, 224. 
Hurons, 149. 
Huxley, 92 7wte, 167 note 1, 222 note. 



Ideas, 85, 138, 152, 243. 

Independence, Declaration of, 86, 233. 

Individualism, 4. 

Industry, 146. 

Infancy, 97 sqq. 

Inheritance, 147. 

Intolerance, 184, 215. 

Islam, 15. 

Italian language, 176. 



Jacobite, 65. 

James, "William, 223, 225 note 2. 
James II., 16. 
Jerusalem, 42. 
Jesuits, 51, 98, 129 note 2. 
Jordan, Wilhelm, 203. 
Judgment, evil of, 150, 152. 
Jura, Mt., 66. 
Jus Natwi^ale, 124. 
Justice, 124. 

Justinian {Institutes), 11 note 3, 14 
note 2. 

K 

Kant, 86 note, 103 note, 195 note, 

224 sq., 242. 
Keats, John, 230 notel. 
Keith, Marshal, 65 sq., 67. 
Kidd, Benjamin, 225 note. 
King Lear, 35, 100 note 1. 
Kleist, Fr. von, 210. 
Koerner, Theodor, 229. 



Labor, division of, 84 ; duty of, 145 gg. 

La Bruyfere, 28. 

La Fontaine, 133. 

Lambercier, M. and Mdlle., 29 sqq. 

Language, 85, 133. 

Latin, 29, 88, 40, 176. 

Lausanne, 41. 

Lav^ of Nature, 9 sqq., 21 sqq. 

Lazarus, 239 note 2. 

Learning, despised by Kousseau, 149. 

Leibniz, 45. 

Lersch {Sprachphilosophie), 6 note 

2. 
Le 9iVLe\XT {Hist, of Church, etc.), 27. 
Levite of Ephraim, 65. 
Lex Naturalis, 9. 
Liberty, 9, 11, 118. 
Life, 147. 
Lincolnshire, 69. 
Literature, 133. 
Livy, 11 note 4, 161 note. 
Locke, John, 8, 16 sqq., 45, 78 note, 

80, 97, 98, 163, 236. 
London, 67. 



250 



INDEX 



Lowell, J. E., 99 note 2, 128 note. 
Luxembourg, Duke aud Duchess of, 

62 sqq., 105 note. 
Lying, 126. 
Lyons, 40, 43, 47, 51. 

M 

Mably, M. de, 47. 

Macbeth, 220 note, 

Machlavelli, 20. 

Magician, 140 sq. 

Magnetism, 140 «/. 

Maine, Sir H. S., '.12 note 3. 

Malebranche, 8, 45. 

Malesherbes, M. de, 74, 77. 

" Mamma," 41 and often. 

Manhood, 203 sqq. 

Manual training, 145. 

Man'iage of Kousseau, 69. 

Marriage of :6mile, 201. 

Marseilles, 204. 

Marsiglio di Padova, 20. 

Meaning, 223. 

Mecca, Meccans, 97, 165. 

Mercure de France^ 56. 

Metaphysics, 153. 

Mirabeau, Marquis de, 69. 

Moli^re, 28. 

Monquin, 69. 

Montaigu, Comte de, 52 »q. 

Montesquieu, 20 sq., 197. 

Montmorency, 62 sq. 

Montpellier, 46. 

Moors. 207. 

Morals, 153. 

Morelly, 20 sq. 

Morley, J. (Housseau), 4, 80 note. 

Motiers, 66. 

Muhammad, 91, 99. 

N 
Nairne, Lady, 280. 
2Sfani {Ifist. of Ve7iice), 28. 
Naples, 204. 
JA'ai'ciase, 51, 59. 
Natural rights, 89. 

Nature, 6, Ssqq., 22, 80, 83, 97, 100 sg'., 
102, 107, 117, 120 sq., 175, 187, 218, 



222 note, 223, 229 sq., 234; law of, 

9 .^qq. ; state of, 8 sqq. 
Necessity, 120. 

Necker de Saussure, Mde., 240. 
Neo-Catholics, 227. 
Neuchatel, 41, 65. 

^Veio I/eloise, 62 sq., 210, 215, 224 note. 
NoMesse oblige, 119. 
Notation, musical, 51. 
Nyon, 32, 41. 

O 

Obscurantism, 150, 225. 
Oversoul, 231. 
Ovid {Metamorphoses), 28. 
Oyster's universe, 97, 131. 



Pantheon, 71. 

Paris, 42, 47 sqq., 69 sqq., 175, 177. 

Pascal, Blaise, 8. 

Passions, 159. 

Patrinreha, 16. 

Pays de Vaud, 82. 

Pension offered to Rousseau, 67. 

Perception, 152. 

Persifleur, Le, 55. 

Persona, 11 note 3. 

Pestalozzi, 237 sq. 

Peter the Great, 93. 

Philopistism, 225 and note 2. 

Philosophy of Rousseau, 85, 224. 

Plato, 6 and note 2, 7, 93, 137, 163 

note. 
Plutarch (Lives), 21. 
Politeness, 174. 
Political Economy, 234. 
Political right, 196 sq. 
Pontverre, M. de, 86. 
Poor, education of the, 106 note. 
Poplars, Isle of, 70. 
Port Royal Logic, 45. 
Postulates of Pure Reason, 106, 224. 
Praxiteles, 216 sq. 
Princes, 16. 
Problem of society, 86. 
Property, private, 234 sq. 
Protestantism, 227. 



INDEX 



251 



Q 

Quintilian, 141 note 1. 

R 

Heading, 134. 

Reason, 6, S, 22 sq., 138. 

Recreation, 151. 

Reflection, 151. 

Reformation, its claims, 5, 7. 

Reformers, 6. 

Religion, ie3, 165, 182 sqq., 227. 

Renaissance, its claims, 5 sq. 

Revelation, 8 sq., 22 sq., 86, 98. 

Jieveries, 70. 

Revolution, American, 233. 

Riding, ISO. 

Ritschl, 227. 

Robbers (Schiller's), 229. 

Robespierre, 227. 

Robinson Crusoe, 143 sqq., 154, 210. 

Romanticism, 224. 

Rome, 165. 

Romola (George Eliot's), 104 note 2. 

Rosmini, 119 note, 240 sqq. and notes. 

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, character 
and importance, 3, 27 ; individual- 
ism, 4 ; outcome of Renaissance, 5 ; 
follows Hobbes, 8 ; literary style, 
25 ; birth, parentage, and education, 
26 sqq. ; his brother, 26 note ; tem- 
perament, 28 ; at Bossey, 29 ; sen- 
suality, 31 ; return to, and life at, 
Geneva, 31 ; apprenticeship, 32 sq. ; 
a tramp, 38 sqq. ; his master's cliar- 
acter, 34 ; becomes a Catholic and 
goes to Mde. de Warens, 36 ; crosses 
the Alps to Turin, 36 ; life there, 
37 sq. ; theft, cruelty, lying, and 
indecency, 88 ; tramps back to 
Chambery, 89 ; deserts musician 
in Lyons, 89 sq. ; is deserted by 
Mde. de Warens, 41 ; meets his 
father at Nyon and goes to Frei- 
burg, 41 ; turns music-teacher at 
Lausanne and Neuchatel, 41 ; fol- 
lows Greek archimandrite, but is 
rescued from him at Soleure, 42 ; 
goes on foot to Paris, 42 ; leaves it 



and goes south, learning on the way 
the condition of the people, 42 sq. ; 
returns to Mde. de Warens, 43 ; 
relations with her, 44 ; becomes 
surveyor's clerk, 44; throws up 
employment, 44 ; tries again to 
teach music, 44 ; new relations with 
Mde. de Warens, 45 ; reads Latin, 
geometry, philosophy, etc., 45 ; 
sutt'ers from languors, vapors, and 
fear of hell, 45 ; becomes an invalid, 
and goes to Montpellier ; vulgar in- 
trigue on the way, 46; "virtuously" 
returns to Mde. de Warens, to find 
his place taken ; first sense of duty, 
46 ; leaves Chambery for Paris, 47 ; 
review of early life and character, 
48 ; reception in Paris ; ill success 
of musical project ; meets Fonte- 
nelle and Diderot, 51 ; secretary of 
embassy in Venice ; experiences 
there, 52 ; returns to Paris, and 
lodges near the Luxembourg ; meets 
Therese Le Vasseur (1744), 53 ; hfe 
with her, 54 ; spends autumn of 
1747 at Chenonceau ; chUd born and 
exposed ; fate of other children, 
55 ; has a revelation due to Dijon 
Academy's prize-off'er, 56 sq. ; wins 
the prize, 58 ; performance of his 
operas, 69 ; second discourse, on 
Inequality, 60 ; visits Geneva with 
Therese and returns to Protestant- 
ism, 60 ; goes to the Hermitage at 
Montmorency, and gives himself 
up to dreaming and his passion 
for Mde. d'Houdetot, 61 ; quarrels 
with Mde. d'Epinay and moves to 
village of Montmorency ; writes 
New Ueloise, Social Contract, and 
Emile, 62 sq. ; becomes acquainted 
with Duke and Duchess of Luxem- 
bourg; ^mile condemned, 63 sq.; 
persecution and flight; Levite of 
Ephraim, 65; stops at Tverdun, 
65 ; settles at Motiers, and is be- 
friended by Marshal Keith, 66 ; 
driven thence, settles on Isle of St. 



252 



INDEX 



Peter, 66 ; driven thence, goes, via 
Paris, witli Hume to England, 67 ; 
success in London, 67 ; settles at 
Wootton, 6S ; quarrels witli Hume, 

68 sq.; returns to France, 69; moves 
about to Trye (near Gisors), Gre- 
noble, Bourgoin (where he infor- 
mally marries Therese), Monquin, 

69 ; returns to Paris and lives there 
for eight years ; his Dialogues, 
Reveries, etc., written ; goes to Er- 
menonville, dies and is buried. 70 ; 
ashes removed to Pantheon, 71 ; 
his character, 71-76 ; inventor of 
manual training, 145 ; his ideal of 
life, 177 sq. ; his ethics, 184 note 2, 
185 ; his influence, 211 sqq. ; defects 
of his system, 211 sqq. ; effect on 
religion, 227 ; father of democracy, 
232. 

Ruskin, 231 note. 

Eussia and Kussians, 93 note. 

8 
St. Andiol, 46. 
St. Esprit, 46. 
St. Just, 227. 
St. Peter, Isle of, 66. 
Savage life, 99. 
Savoy, 36. 
Savoyard Vicar, 38, 40, 64, 165 sqq., 

224 note 2, 226. 
Bcsvola, Mucius, 28. 
Schiller, 211, 229. 
Schopenhauer, 208 note. 
Science, 133. 
Scythians, 196. 
Sensations, 152. 
Sepulchre, Holy, 42. 
Sexuality, 157, 217. 
Shakespeare, 9 note, 100 note 1, 220 

note. 
Slavery, 209, 220. 
Small-pox, 130. 
Smell, sense of, 132. 
Smith, Joseph, 91. 
Social Contract, 62, 77, 78 sqq., 197, 

198 note. 



Socialism, 4, 234 sqq. 

Social Sympathies, 160 sqq. 

Society, 161. 

Socrates, 7, 79. 

Soleure, 42. 

Solitaries, The, 203 sqq. 

Sophie, 185 sqq., 203 sqq. 

Sophists, 79. 

Sophocles, 128 note. 

Soul, nature of, 248. 

Sovereign, 11 sq., 87 sqq. 

Space, 132, 

Spectator, The, 192. 

Spencer, Herbert, 125 note 3. 

Spinoza, 145 note 1, 164 note. 

Steinthal, 239 note 2. 

Stoicism, 190, 199, 215, 218, 222, 

234 sq. 
Subjectivism, 1. 
Swimming, 130. 



Tacitus, 161 note. 

Taste, 175. 

Taxation, 235. 

Telemaque, 186, 192. 

Tennyson, 25 note, 77, 92 note, 144 

note, 156, 203, 211, 224 note 2. 
Therese Le Vasseur, 53 sqq., 58 sqq., 

GS sq. 
Thoroau, H. D., 144 note. 
Thucydides, 161 note. 
Travelling, 195 sqq. 
Trent, Council of, 4. 
Turin, 36 sq. 

U 

Unitarianism, 227. 
Unsocial education, 218. 
Usefulness, 141 sq. 
Utopia, 93. 

V 
Vaccination, 130. 
Vanity, 141 note 1. 
Venice, 52. 

Vercellis, Mde. de, 37 sq. 
Vincennes, 56 sq. 

Voltaire, 5, 25, 60, 63 sq., 67, 68, 83, 
226, 227, 229, 



INDEX 



253 



W 

Walden (Thoreau's), 144 note. 

Walpole, Horace, 68 note. 

Warens, Mde. de, 36, 39 sqq., 43 sqq., 

187 note. 
Werther, Sorrows of, 229. 
Wilhelm Meifiter, 25 note. 
Will, general, 90. 
Willers, 24. 
Women, 178 sqq., 217. 
Wootton, 68 Hq. 
Wordsworth, 99, 151 note 1, 230 

note 2. 



Work, duty of, 145 sq. 

Writing, 135. 

Wundt, Wilh., 239 note 2. 



Xenophon, 161 note. 

Y 

Youth, 178 sqq. 
Yverdun, 65. 

Z 

Zamori (von Kleist's), 210. 



CbC Great educators nkbolas murrey smkr 

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THE GREAT EDUCATORS. 



NOTICES OF THE SERIES. 

' ' Admirably conceived in a truly philosophic spirit and executed with unusual 
skill. It is rare to find books on pedagogy at once so instructive and so interest- 
ing. ... I hope to read tnem all, which is more than I can say of any other 
series.'' — William Pkeston Johnston, Tulane University. 

' ' The Scribners are rendering an important service to the cause of educa- 
tion in the production of the ' Great Educators Series. ' ' '—Joumn/ of Edncatio?:. 

' ' We have not too many series devoted to the history and the theory of edu- 
cation, and the one represented at the present moment by the two volumes before 
us promises to take an important place— a leading place amongst the few we 
have. ' ' — London Educational Times. 



ARISTOTLE. 

The whole of ancient pedagogy is Professor Davidson's subject, the 
course of education being traced up to Aristotle, — an account of whose 
life and system forms, of course, the main portion of the book,- — and 
down from that great teacher, as well as philosopher, through the decline 
of ancient civilization. An appendix discusses " The Seven Liberal Arts," 
and paves the way for the next work in chronological sequence, — Professor 
West's, on Alcuin. The close relations between CJreek education and 
Greek social and political life are kept constantly in view by Professor 
Davidson. A special and very attractive feature of the work is the cita- 
tion, chiefly in English translation, of passages from original sources 
expressing the spirit of the different theories described. 

' ' I am very glad to see this excellent contribution to the history of educa- 
tion. Professor Davidson's work is admirable. His topic is one of the most 
profitable in the entire history of culture."— W. '1'. Harris, L'. S. Cojnmissioucr 

of Education. 

" ' Aristotle ' is delightful reading. I know nothing in English that covers 
the field of Greek Education so well. You will find it very hard to maintain 
this level in the later works of the series, but I can wish you nothing better 
than that you may do so."— G. Stanley Hall, CVirrX- Unii'crsity. 

ALCUIN. 

Professor West aims to develop the story of educational institutions 
in Europe from the beginning of the influence of Christianity on education 
to the origin of the Universities and the first beginnings of the modern 
movement. A careful analysis is made of the effects of Greek and 
Roman thought on the educational theory and practice of the early 
Christian, and their great system of schools, and its results are studied 
with care and in detail. The personality of Alcuin enters largely into the 
story, because of his dominating influence in the movement. 

' ' Die von Ihnen mir freundlichst zugeschickte Schrift des Herrn Professor 
West iiber Alcuin habe ich mit lebhaftem Interesse gelesen und bin uberrascht 
davon in Nord America eine so eingehende Beschaftigung mit unserer Vorzeit 
und eine so ausgebreitete Kenntniss der Literature iiber diesen Gegenstand zu 
flnden. Es sind mir wohl Einzelheiten begeenet an denen ich etwas auszu- 
setzen fand, die ganze Auffassung und Darstellung aber kann ich nur als sehr 
wohl gelungen und zutreffend bezeichnen." — Professor Wattenbach, Berlin. 

' ' I take pleasure in saying that ' Alcuin ' seems to me to combine careful 
scholarly investigation with popularity, and condensation with interest of de- 
tail, in a truly admirable way. ' '—Professor G. T. Ladd, o/ y'ale. 



THE GREAT EDUCATORS 



ABELARD. 



M. Compayre, the well-known French educationist, has prepared in this 
volume an account of the origin of the great European Universities 
that is at once the most scientific and the most interesting in the English 
language. Naturally the University of Paris is the central figure in the 
account ; and the details of its early organization and influence are fully 
given. Its connection with the other great universities of the Middle 
Ages and with modern university movement is clearly pointed out. 
Abelard, whose system of teaching and disputation was one of the earliest 
signs of the rising universities, is the typical figure of the movement ; and 
M. Compayre has given a sketch of his character and work, from an 
entirely new point of view, that is most instructive. 

' ' ' Abelard ' may fairly be called the founder of university education in 
Europe, and we have in this volume a description of his work and a careful 
analysis of his character. As the founder of the great Paris University in the 
thirteenth century the importance of his work can hardly be overestimated. 
The chapter devoted to Abelard himself is an intensely interesting one, and the 
other chapters are of marked value, devoted as they are to the origin and early 
history of universities. . . . The volume is a notable educational work. "— 
Boston Daily TraTeler. 

LOYOLA. 

This work is a critical and authoritative statement of the educational 
principles and method adopted in the Society of Jesus, of which the 
author is a distinguished member. The first part is a sketch, biograph- 
ical and historical, of the dominant and directing personality of Ignatius, 
the Founder of the order, and his comrades, and of the establishment and 
early administrations of the Society. In the second an elaborate analysis 
of the system of studies is given, beginning with an account of Aquaviva 
and the Ratio StitdioniiH, and considering, under the general heading of 
"the formation of the master," courses of literature and philosophy, of 
divinity and allied sciences, repetition, disputation, and dictation ; and 
under that of "formation of the scholar," symmetry of the courses pur- 
sued, the prelection, classic literatures, school management and control, 
examinations and graduation, grades and courses. 

" This volume on St. Ignatius of ' Loyola and the Educational System of the 
Jesuits,' by the Rev. Thomas Hughes, will probably be welcomed by others be- 
sides those specially interested in the theories and methods of education. 
Written by a member of the Jesuit Society, it comes to us with authority, and 
presents a complete and well - arranged survey of the work of educational 
development carried out by Ignatius and his followers. " —Zt>«<i)« Saturday 
Keviciv. 

FROEBEL. 

Friedrich Froebel stands for the movement known both in Europe 
and in this country as the New Education, more completely than any 
other single name. The kindergarten movement, and the whole de- 
velopment of modern methods of teaching, have been largely stimulated 
by, if not entirely based upon, his philosophical exposition of education. 
It is not believed that any other account of Froebel and his work is so 
complete and exhaustive, as the author has for many years been a student 
of Froebel's principles and methods not only in books, but also in actual 
practice in the kindergarten. Mr. Bowen is a frequent examiner of kin- 



THE GREAT EDUCATORS 

dergartens, of the children in them, and of students who are trained to be 
kindergarten teachers. 

' ' No one, in England or America, is fitted to give a more sympathetic or lucid 
interpretation ot Froebel than Mr. Courthope Bowen. ... Mr. Bowen's book 
will he a most important addition to any library, and no student of Froebel can 
afford to do without it." — Kaie Douglas Wiggin, AVzy \'oik City. 

HERB ART. 

In this book, President De Garmo has given, for the first time in the 
Enghsh language, a systematic analysis of the Herbartian theory of ed- 
ucation, which is now so much studied and discussed in Great Britain 
and the United States, as well as in Germany. Not only does the 
volume contain an exposition of the theory as expounded by Herbart 
himself, but it traces in detail the development of that theory and the 
additions to it made by such distinguished names as Ziller, Story, Frick, 
Rein, and the American School of llerbartians. Especially valuable will 
be found Dr. De Garmo's careful and systematic exposition of the prob- 
lems that centre around the concentration and correlation of studies. 
These problems are generally acknowledged to be the most pressing and 
important at present before the teachers of the country. 

' ' Some one has said there can be no great need without the means of supply- 
ing such need, and no sooner did the fraternity realize its need of a knowledge 
of the essentials of Herbart than Dr. De Garmo's excellent work on ' Herbart and 
the Herbartians,' by Scribner's Sons of New York, appeared, a book which, 
costing but a dollar, gives all that the teacher really needs, and gives it with 
devout loyalty and sensible discrimination. It is the work of a believer, a de- 
votee, an enthusiast, but it is the masterpiece of the writer who has not for- 
gotten what he owes to his reputation as a scholar in his devotion to his 
master. ' ' — Jom-nal of Education. 

THE ARNOLDS. 

No book heretofore published concerning one or both of the Arnolds 
has accomplished the task performed in the present instance by Sir 
Joshua Fitch. A long-time colleague of Matthew Arnold in the British 
Educational Department, the author — leaving biography aside — has, with 
unusual skill, written a succinct and fascinating account of the important 
services rendered to the educational interests of Great Britain by the 
Master of Rugby and his famous son. The varied and successful efforts 
of the latter in behalf of a better secondary education during his long 
official career of thirty-five years as Inspector of Training Schools, no 
less than the notable effect produced at Rugby by the inspiring example 
of Thomas Arnold's high-minded character and enthusiastic scholarship, 
are admirably presented. Whatever in the teaching of both seems likely 
to prove of permanent value has been judiciously selected by the author 
from the mass of their writings, and incorporated in the present volume. 
The American educational public, which cannot fail to acknowledge a 
lasting debt of gratitude to the Arnolds, father and son, will certainly wel- 
come this sympathetic exposition of their influence and opinions. 

" The book is opportune, for the Amoldian tradition, though widely diffused 
in America, is not well based on accurate knowledge and is pretty much in 
the air. Dr. Fitch seems the fittest person by reason of his spiritual sympathy 
with the father and his personal association with the son, to sketch in this brief 
way the two most typical modern English educators. And he has done his work 
almost ideally well within his limitations of purpose. . . . The two men 

live in these pages as they were. ' ' — Educational Review, New York. 



